Sketchy Memories

Milton Jordan

August 6, 2023

Your quartet’s down to two cracking voices

so we all tried to sing your favorites,

but without any tenor to reach

your higher, more noticeable notes.

We displayed Stella’s color photos.

but set them aside and Scott pencil sketched 

from memory that first place you owned,

colors left to our imaginations.

Your ‘52 blue De Soto parked 

out front, two tall evergreens in the yard,

with that rope and whitewall tire swing 

you left hanging from one of the low limbs.

Later in Schmidt’s drafty back room

around those four scarred domino tables

a few of us who still remembered

that old house, swapped our sketchy memories.

Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He co-edited the first Texas Poetry Assignment anthology, Lone Star Poetry, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022.