Lone Star PowerPoint
Milton Jordan
November 17, 2024
This backwater slough you see on the screen
fills the old bed of my major Pine Belt
river where she ran before cutting
a more direct route through these sand hills
too soft to hold her insistent current.
And tracking west across ridges you see
in these images, we’ve reached this primary
artery that marks the edge of my piney woods
where the Dogwood you see here blooms,
before cedar and post oak take over.
The map sketched here shows the expanse
I fill and other rivers on my western flank
which run more swiftly and more shallow
as you see over stone and small boulder
beds we see here and more prominently here.
Not to bore you with excess rumination,
I remember these streams, undammed,
running near flood stage in this older photo
and earlier as here when these folks
pitched their hide tents along this river’s bend.
In these closing images, I focus
on the Big River, with residents
crossing from either side to visit
or work together as if this stream
were less a barrier than those sand hills.
Milton Jordan lives with Anne in Georgetown, Texas. He co-edited the first Texas Poetry Assignment anthology, Lone Star Poetry, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022.