I work all night throwing groceries on the shelves
but I dream of working produce, the light nature
of the fruit, a day job, a benign subject nobody
could ever argue against, and I wonder if
the produce workers embrace each grape like
a single moment or if they only consider
the entire cluster like it was an hour, or a day,
or a year for that matter, and I wonder if when
they sweep the floor during those daylight hours,
on the hour, every hour, if they mourn the casualties,
the grapes that slip off, lying there useless on the floor,
immediately reduced from revered badge carelessly
dangled by the gods in all those paintings to only
a slipping hazard, just a weapon trying to take
out all the old ladies squeezing the avocados.