Stuckey’s road stop,

gas and free peanut brittle

in the nowhere along Route 66

flatlining the Southwest

with twenty-four breakfast

Dawn bright in my eyes,

red rock and black coffee

I’m sitting single 

plastic booth crackles

under me

One nearby table full

of booted, sun-cured men

English rumbles among them

words of cattle, grazing

and stock feed

A couple of ranchers slope off

cattle conversation

shifts into vacas and caballos

my eggs and bacon arrive

as others give an adios

Southwestern layers

peel off like onion skin

pick-up trucks rumble out

leaving a handful of men

birthed in this dry land

It-is-good

Navajo men spiral in

Ya-ta-hey