Driving West

Milton Jordan

June 19, 2021 

In Lampasas the Wagon Wheel Motel

used half hubs with seven spokes reaching

half rims for head and footboards on beds

spread with bright western design blankets.

Amberman scheduled early arrival

so we could swim in the spring water pool

next door before eating our supper.  

The Wagon Wheel was our midway stop

when we drove to visit his brother

on chalk dry land near Ozona.

Uncle Doc, he said, had blown two fortunes

before he found those eighty acres 

about as far from deep green forest

and disapproving family as he could move.

Milton Jordan lives in Georgetown with the musician Anne Elton Jordan. His most recent poetry collection is What the Rivers Gather, SFASU Press, 2020. Milton edited the anthology, No Season for Silence: Texas Poets and Pandemic, Kallisto Gaia Press, 2020.