Another Day Laborer

It’s 6:15am
at the coffee kiosk
in the AM/PM 
with the other day laborers,
dirty orange shirts
and dark almond faces,
fueling up,
some with coffee
some get the
2 for $2.29 hot dogs
and slather them
with every possible condiment,
for reasons I suspect
are part culinary
and part budgetary.

They talk and laugh,
a quasi-fraternity,
in fluid Spanish to protect
their privacy,
their dignity.
I view and respect them
from a distance
because even though 
we are all Mexicans,
I don’t fit in with them.

I arrive at the college
where my title is Dean,
and sit in sterile conference rooms
among the academicians
each holding an iPad,
properly groomed
in blazers and ties,
except me in my
rolled-up shirtsleeves,
sans neckwear,
listening to
esoteric rhetoric
about pedagogy
and student access.

Around the conference table
the array of fleshtones
(mostly pink)
possessing impressive titles
(mostly ceremonial)
congratulate me
on my latest
whatever-it-is
and never suspect
that I work double time
to banish any suspicion
that I am just
a misplaced day laborer,
and I realize that
though I’ve been here
twenty years,
I still don’t fit in here either.

Returning to
my quiet office
I hunt and peck,
wrestling
with feelings of doubt
and inferiority,
trying to shape
something poetic,
redeeming,
maybe even heroic,

tap tap
tap
tap
backspace
backspace
backspace
backspace
backspace

but finally
fitting in.

[Written for #OpenLinkNight at www.dversepoets.org - a poetic oasis in the internet desert.]