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POETRY

Entertaining Angels

At Love’s Travel Stop outside of Shelby, Iowa
I thought God cared and chitter-chattered in my ear
and I ate a basket of Chester’s chicken tenders
alone at the counter, in a near empty diner.

Written on a grease splattered tag: Pearl
She poured my refill of Pepsi then left
and asked from the kitchen,
“Where you from? Going somewhere nice?”

I trailed a semi down I-80 — windows low
listening to a local college station —
red tail lights glowing, weaving,
lumbering towards infinity, rattling in the void of corn and soy.

“Ok,” Pearl said and went and wiped an empty table,
ammonia perfuming the atmosphere
and to no one in particular added, “Love,
truckers always know where they’re going.”

But at night I stop and wonder
which lights are stars and which are trash,
I watch galaxies muted by billboards saying:
God loves everybody. But me,

I still wonder, Who in particular? Someone
once said: We are just a little lower than this,
crowned with glory, made of stardust —
“Yes, Love, isn’t that nice?”

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Tommy lives in Southern California with his wife, Alyssa, and their two children, Atticus and Gwendolyn, where he serves as a pastor. His poetry has appeared in The Windhover, Stone Circle Review, Ekstasis, and elsewhere.

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Image: “Alone” by Bob Jagendorf, CC BY-NC 2.0, via Flickr.com. Modified by Veronica McDonald.