On most summer nights
I push up back the sleeves
of my ordinary life;
I become a busser.
But there was one night,
wrapped in the onset
of mid-summer,
when my past and my future collided,
that I was,
by forces of boredom and some magic
a movie star.
Work became out-of-body
bliss: to pour water
with snake-tongue sureness,
and my eyes were
six-pronged starlets:
reflections of putting flame to candle
and setting it
to the tables of the general public.
I would breathe a word or two
about the bread
or the water and weather
as an insider
sharing a drop of glamour
with the outside world.
But I was cloaked,
untouchable in the well-built smile
that all celebrities wear
when they do their job.
I spent the evening
on the rise of my career.
With my stage make-up
the rouge of adrenaline,
and my apron
part of the costume too,
I lined myself with Hollywood
to fight off the ordinary.
Nights before mattered less,
and nights after,
still in my busser's uniform
I remembered how
to be a movie star.
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