Eat Here, Get Gas

This poem was part of Visual Inverse, an ekphrastic collaboration between the Plymouth Center for the Arts and Poetry the Art of Words. The piece of art which inspired it is also called "Eat Here, Get Gas", and is a multimedia collage created by Becky Haletky. 

Please click here to visit Becky's website: http://www.artbecko.com/

 

Eat Here, Get Gas

Crushed stone crunches under rubber tires, signal bell rings
once, then again, as a pair of overalls, ‘Billy’ stitched
on the chest patch, asks, “Fill it? Check the oil?”
“How’s the coffee?” I nod toward the door.
“Strong enough to defend itself,” grin drier than gravel.
 
Inside, air thick with sweet maple syrup, sizzling pork fat,
and coffee — nutty and bitter and welcoming coffee.
Already filling a mug for me before the door has closed behind me,
hair the color and shape of an Egyptian pyramid balanced precariously,
she’s shouting into the kitchen, “Crack a pair, keep ‘em sunny,
hash and toast, don’t burn it,” her voice holds everything
that’s ever been worthwhile, the inside of the world in her eyes.
 
Her patch to match Billy’s, “Grace,” fits her as well as her dress
once did, before life filled her and damn near killed her, as it does.
I settle on a stool, cracked plastic over too-thin cushion,
“Let me have some pancakes and bacon.”
Grace hollers to the chef, “I need a stack, three
strips on the side. And tell Horace that Ford needs
an oil change when he finishes washing those dishes.”
 
It could be thirty miles outside of Bangor or
deep in Appalachia, a swamp west of Tallahassee or
a mile high on the road out of Denver,
the only difference the roundness of the vowels,
the temperature of the morning air.
‘Eat Here, Get Gas,’ a joke as old as beans,
as true as biscuits and gravy, as honest as Billy and Grace.
A stop here refuels more than your car.
Never pass up a chance to be filled.