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A Message From Your Local Winter Wheat
Winter should be the gentlest season.
It would be a little unhinged, I guess, to suggest that I can personally understand the language of wheat. Wheat doesn’t speak English, and besides, the wheat that’s above ground right now is basically dead. Anything alive about the wheat is happening underground — and the underground stuff isn’t much to write home about, either.
However, last Sunday I went on a date with my girlfriend to the Snow Beach. I’ve written this like it’s an official name, but it’s not: I would deem all of the sandy shores of Lake Michigan right now to be Snow Beaches, proper noun. One shouldn’t diminish them with lowercase letters. They are fabulous.
I hadn’t been to the Snow Beach yet this year, and mine — the Loyola Park Beach —is breathtaking: the waves hard and frozen in time; the shallow water slick and solid. Just beyond a little lighthouse are stalks and stalks of wheat blanketing the area that’s a nature preserve in summer.
I spent too long staring at them, wondering what they would want to say, if they could speak.
I’d say, “What’s up, wheat? What’s new? What’s going on with you? It’s nice to see you, where all the other plants are gone.” And it’d go,