Amber Waves of Grain

The silence of the store and the knowingness of the songs can nearly break us...

Photo by Aditya Vyas on Unsplash

These days I am living in America. I live in the Northeast where lately it has been snowing. I feel glad for the snow. Snow reminds me of the North. Friends from the North periodically write to report on the snow and to mention where they have skied. Recently, I was told that the sun has returned. Two minutes on Wednesday! A friend wrote to tell me. She was writing about how long she saw the sun. It is easy to feel her exclamation mark. But I am in America. I am in the Northeast. And yes, I resist saying exactly where. I could live among a million people, and I would still resist saying exactly where I am. All places will be found, but some places will be lost. I lean towards what is lost.

I work at a grocery store now, which requires me to leave our apartment at 3:30 in the morning. This means that I wake up between 2:00 and 3:00. I am something of an insomniac, yet I could use a few more hours of sleep. I read before I leave the apartment. Mostly I have been reading poetry. Poetry accommodates the early hours better than prose. Sometimes I carry a line or two with me for the drive. I tend to write down the better lines of a given poem, even at 2:00 in the morning, like these from Jane Kenyon:

The cars on either side of her
pulled away so briskly
that it made her sick of heart. 

Cars on either side of us. The hush that follows us after we close a door. An empty chair. It doesn’t take much to make some of us sick of heart. Or there are these lines from John Berger:

You from the plain
                I from the sea
we recalled horizons

The “you” and “I” and the “horizons” in Berger’s poem are filled with us—they are ours. That is why we carry the words or scribble them down on scraps of paper.

When 3:30 arrives, I drive. It is cold outside, but the cold here does not touch me. On a Monday, while driving, I saw stars shining brighter than the city lights. I wanted to stop the car and cheer for them, but work is work. Our time is not our time. All have a right to die in America. The store, of course, is empty of customers. The doors open at 6:00, but I am here early, as are a few others. There are the cleaners. At this hour, they are finishing their work. They have worked all night. I do not know where any of them come from, these cleaners, but they are Latinos. I say good morning. I ask how work has been. I ask whoever I am talking with if they are tired. I manage to ask these questions is my very limited Spanish. They are patient with my limitations. They answer within the limits of their English. Now we are friends. They give me a thumbs-up when they see me working. Just this morning, in fact, one of the cleaners asked me, “Hey, man, are you working?” “Yes, I work.” “That’s good, man, that’s good.” “Are you working?” “Yes, always working.” Both of us wanted to say more, but we have reached the borders of our languages—too soon, I think. We smile and nod and then go back to our duties. The store this early in the morning is the loneliest place in America. Maybe it is the music. Why is it that during the before and after hours of a grocery store do we hear ubiquitous pop songs from a generation or two back? The silence of the store and the knowingness of the songs can nearly break us. We hear Mr. Mister’s “Broken Wings,” Bruce Hornsby’s “The Way It Is,” any number of songs by Toto, and “Stuck with You” by Huey Lewis and the News. Last week, I almost came to tears with “Stuck with You.” It is difficult to say why. I cut fruit for 8 hours. The more robotic I am, the better I am for the company. The company would not admit this, but I know better. They know better. And when I leave after my shift, I tell myself that I have earned money, necessary money. I walk to my car. I don’t look back, like Lot fleeing Sodom. No. Not really. But it is America. I will get back to the apartment and take a much needed nap, and I will read before I sleep. I will read about snow falling faintly through the universe or of the moon bending around a barn to look at a flower. Things I should not forget.

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Damon Falke is the author of, among other works, The Scent of a Thousand Rains, Now at the Uncertain Hour, By Way of Passing, and Koppmoll (film).

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