BREAKFAST AT DYSART’S

Eighteen wheelers never whizz by
the sun-flooded truck stop on Coldbrook Road.

Ravenous drivers, weary of rolling
behemoths up the highways,
climb aboard Dysart’s
as if it was a lifeboat.

Open day and night,
hot showers, motherly love,
plump waitresses, home-style food.

Heaps of blueberry hotcakes
slabs of Canadian bacon
strawberry-rhubarb pie a la mode.

Tattooed and muscle-bound,
scorpions and rattlers
brawny as the Bronze age,
moved to tears by Johnny Cash.

Need to pee,
can’t-stand-the-slow-pokes.
Years of patience worn down in the pen
like a treadless tire.

One driver curled up in his cab
Asleep, gin-drunk, he dreams of fighting back.
He parries father’s fist
with a jack-knife.

He wakes up.
Hits the road.
Crash.