Truck Stop Ode

Odd in hindsight, where we spent nights 
that year of bracing weather. Borders
of Mass and New York, border of home 
and not having a home: truck stop 

at that crux of interstates. Suspendered 
men at the formica counter before Lotto 
and Keno machines, tvs with their ruddy 
static screens and foiled antennae. Kids, 

we lived in that cloud of smoke, willfully 
scholarly there among drivers, servers, 
and cooks, while we dreamed up our own 
Bohemia, as if we were not of that world, 

had somewhere else to choose to be.
Feasting on French surrealist verse, 
old Chinese poems and Vedic texts, 
one another’s marbled, brilliant 

composition books. Looking around, 
penning our poems, smoking our Camels 
to columns of ash, not yet knowing 
how this space would shape us.

Our 90s economy of ones and fives
bought access to that site with its food 
and galvanized roof. How nourishing 
when Kathy, with her long gray mane, 

her mirth and flowered shirts, would greet us.
Smiling lines of her face. Nacreous nails.
Flown wings of her filigree butterfly ring 
when she placed our plates before us. 

Omelettes and bacon, biscuits 
and gravy, oily potatoes sustained us, 
and coffee with endless refills. 
How sweet to be unparented then

when Kathy fed and called us honey, 
when she asked what more we wanted.