A poem a day for 2013 - day 7 - Road head trip

Late night
Denny's
On a little road
Way north of the Grapevine
That nobody knows

I am alone
And so is she
And so is he

We crowd our tables
With thoughts
Of games we choose
To stay awake

I think of signs I've passed
With letters of his name
Hours away from home
An o
A d
Still no n
Maybe I will never see a y

The woman behind me
Has no place to go
She will nurse hot chocolate
Until the staff asks her to leave

I know nowhere to go when I see it

Three women to my right
Belong to a Christian choir
We are separately secretly surprised
At the melody that warms the air

Another crowd comes in
A black woman with
Leggings knit sweater and cap
She looks like me from afar

These are random moments
If any is ever random

These are random moments
That make me remember awful random moments
And my mind is magnet to horror
So I wonder what some woman
Any woman
Was thinking as she sat in a movie theatre
In the same awful hour
Some man walked in with a gun

I am horrible
And so is my late night movie filled mind
I am an artist
A rememberer
A depresser over tragic events
I am just wired that way
I think

What would my last thoughts be
If the gunman was that guy
Or him with the orange shirt sitting alone

What about the children
Who ran into the water
To avoid getting shot
Or the teachers and babies
I can't stop thinking about

No Christmas parades
Or new years ball
No turkey or sweet potato pie
Can erase those thoughts

I said I would leave it alone
Because it would always be too soon to write about
But I am an artist
A poet
A rememberer

Lord you have my heart
Lord you have my heart

The Christian choir has grown from three women
To twenty men and women

Lord you have my heart
Lord you have my heart

And this is not a church
Or rehearsal hall
Or bus

But they are right on time I guess
Because my mind will swim
If not for
Lord you have my heart
Swim and swirl in thoughts
About babies nobody could save
And teenagers running into water to live
And the girl in Steubenville, Ohio
Who was raped and passed around

I wish poems were enough
I wish anything was enough
I wish something was enough to ease my mind
And tragedies in the world

It is time for me to leave now
To pay for my tea and be on my way
Because the choir members are exchanging
High fives and sharing moments of The Hobbit

So that you know
There are good thoughts in my head too
There are
Good thoughts about
Other random moments
Random moments and

Lord you have my heart