The black bronco came to stop,
its tailgate rapped in canvas blacken by
         road grime from Texas and Lousiania
         concealing the saddle bags.
         when five children scramble from the back seat,
         hitting the ground in colored pajamas,
               yellow, blue, lavender, white
               with patterns of toy horses, puppets,
                                                    and WD cartoons.
An old cowman,
whose fading reddish leather-skin
broke into a smile
stretching out into a Mexican wooden cross.
He looks back to Highway Ten along Mississippi Coast,
       in a stare of time-travel.
A woman
wearing stripped Mexican embroidery jeans,
slaps her ass with both hands.
Her mountain blue expression,
     a shared ancestral homeland in the sky.
The children gallop to a nearby McDonald's outside concrete table,
     the animation of some hope.
Her hands lift from the ice plastic box,
a rolled white bundle, wax-papered
       a dozen rolled flour tortillas,
       burned from a hot flat iron grill,
       the rolled home-mades,
                         one by one
                                   form into their hands...
Just as an empty McDonald's bag stand upright
                      in center stage of the journey to the North.