She escorts our six-year-old to her inner chamber,
Like a fisherman gloating over a freshly hooked trout;
After thirty minutes in the waiting room
Watching actors and models and junior agents
Sashaying from door to door,
we are called back, way back,
Down a star-studded corridor where black & white glossies
Line the walls and lie loose in baskets for easy fingering.
We find our son at a black lacquer conference table,
Hollywood Hills gleaming behind him through the glass,
The Hollywood sign decorating the distant ridge
As white letters on a birthday cake—and our little boy,
Hands folded, smugly saying he’s "ready for his close-up."
At this moment
I want to abduct our son and smuggle him back to childhood,
Setting love as the only ransom.