There Are Plenty of Angels, 
 

She Said in the LADIES,
in the rest area LADIES on the road to 
Terre Haute. Plenty of angels, she said again. 
But not one, I’ve heard, not a single one 
will mission to the fade as it does to the darkness. 
A stall door latched. Her bag got hung.
Seen that sign, back west a ways?
The one on the warehouse, in a movie marquee? 
Blessed Hope, it says. Blessed Hope, she said. 
It’s meant to be a sign from heaven, 
but hope’s, I’d say, more a human invention, 
like freeways, she said. Funny word, she said. 
They call ’em highways when you pay to ride ’em. 
Mama’s buried off one in Missouri. Had her 
forty years and forty days on earth. 
And the day we did it was a noisy day, 
all out-o’-doors like a day at the beach: 
the tearin’ down sounds of the sun and the wind, 
clouds and trees, grass and stones,