Ode to a Black Man in the Grocery Store

We stood together,
apart,
in the grocery store,
reaching out,
black hands, white hands,
for bread.

We looked at each other,
blind,
and could have spoken,
but looking inward,
brown eyes, blue eyes,
were silent instead.

Could we sit down,
together,
and eat bread for three days?
Could I bake bread for you,
and you for me?
Is this our common thread?

Is there a better symbol of our common humanity than bread? When I lived in Mali, the bakers rose well before dawn, mixing the simplest elements, water and flour, into dough, kneading until it was ready to go into the stone oven heated by wood fire to become bread.

We all need bread.

When I say my prayers, I ask God, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Are there parts of all the prayers of all the peoples of the world that ask for bread? No matter who we are, what we are, when we are, where we are, why we are...

We all need bread.

My great grandpa, whose family name was Baker, owned a store in West Greenville when that part of town was the city of Greenville County. He sold goods to people and was good to people and was elected mayor by the people around him. People came to him to buy bread.

We all need bread.

I wonder, if a black man walked into the store, did my great grandpa know him? By family? By name? By handshake? By heart?  Or did my great grandpa see him as inferior, as less than human?

I don’t know, for he passed away before I came along to ask him.

I do know, however, unless we are geniuses or fools, we become a part of the time and place in which we live, and that time and that place was deeply imbued with social Darwinism and white supremacy, racism and segregation.

This time and place, too.

We all need bread.

We stood together,
apart,
in the grocery store,
reaching out,
black hands, white hands,
for bread.

We all need bread.

#GeorgeFloyd

- Trevor Scott Barton, Ordinary Time, 2020