Graveyard Shift

I man the gate at the world's largest drywall plant
in Silver Grove, Kentucky
3rd shift.
Kenworths and Freightliners slowly drift in
through the night
like behemoth nocturnal catfish, trolling for a bite.
The truckers are rednecks, hillbillies, poor Black men,
Russians, Cubans, Africans, Mexicans, Bosnians
all sojourning refugees from somewhere in the developing world.
A hundred accents and
a dozen kind of reading problems
make explaining plant policy complicated.
"Te nombre senior? Se require un casco aqui." I say, clipboard in hand.
"De donde eres usted?" they ask me surprised.
"I'm from here. I'm American."
The grizzled night crew employees appear suddenly
out of the night mist
behind the wheel of loud rides that have seen better times
smoking Winstons, Marlboros, GT Ones, and Kentucky's Best.
I dutifully record their entrance and egress times
on the appropriate alphabetical clipboards.
Their names, recited in Kentucky drawl
are a lifetime of sunburnt workdays, bad tattoos,
cold beer, and well-deserved hunting trips:
"Billy Gentry, Maintenance"
"Tom Workman, Distribution"
Addington, Carter, Deaton, Henslee, Holloway, and McQueary
hillbilly names with a few lost German ones thrown in too
Honaker, Obermeyer, Schnieder
I sit in my little metal guard shack
steeltoes propped up on the desk
camera monitors before me
as the fog rolls in off the Ohio and
3 a.m. freight trains blast by
shuttling coal, cattle, and mysterious boxcars to points distant.
I wonder about life on the rails,
glancing up from my library books
as the diesel locomotive thunders across the grade crossing.
From inside the plant
sirens wail as something mechanical
fails on line number 2.
Four deafening reports of chattering equipment shatter the night.
Moths flicker around the dim orange haze of the fifty-foot lightpoles.
A solitary dumptruck passes on Route 8.
Silence after.
The world sleeps,
and I am paid mostly
for my willingness to ignore my diurnal rhythm.