Where Once the Bridge

Milton Jordan

September 7, 2025

We sat on that familiar trailside bench

beyond the low stone bridge over

the slow river’s now and then gurgle

and you remarked as you had before,

Your cane sounds like some scout just learning

to tap out a telegraph warning 

and I offered my repeated reply,

I’m just learning to use this cane.  

But that morning the stream’s roaring surge 

left an empty gaping space where once the bridge 

crossed and our familiar bench tangled in

a stand of trees at the downstream elbow,

as we watched, silently, with others 

from the road above the higher east bank.

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