Prison Limousine

Our social worker, nine and half months pregnant and threatening to drop her load

any minute in the sterile courtroom where a dozen boys  in chains and handcuffs filed slowly in,

was read the riot act by the female judge.

A social worker NEVER escorts a child to prison! she exclaimed hotly.

(The caseworker had first offered me the opportunity to chauffeur, which I politely declined.

That is not how things are done! roared the judge.

Apparently, it is not a meek degreed sociologist with a beat-up 

affordable vehicle who chaperones a thirteen-year-old alleged criminal

past miserable strips of land dotted with overflowing stinking dumps,

strewn litter, and evil-looking, vacant-staring half-crumbling buildings

with present and past lives no one would wish to imagine.

It is never an overly (or underly) fecund duck-waddling worked-unto-death

caseworker, nor an addled, depressed and traumatized parent, or a taxi,

a limousine, coach, boat, plane, train, helicopter, elephant,

cruise ship, or chariot that transports to jail,

but rather a blue-suited crew-cut officer of the law who assumes

that duty with a modified, slightly immodest car.

I thought the judge would never let up, would for certain induce

the woman who actually had not taken my son from me but simply

arrived at the garish flourescent-lit office that black and nasty night

to receive my boy, who was, as usual, unrepentant and unperturbed, except

for being in trouble once again.

In fact, he was fairly excited by the whole horrific affair, as it was a change of pace,

and he was the center of attention, his coveted, one true home.

To some small extent, the tirade took my mind off the large, slumped,

dangerous-looking adolescents among whom my son was the smallest,

all seated sedately off to the left like a hung jury, or even some small

dinner-theater audience but for the glinting silver connecting them like

enormous dots as they sat glaring in identical neon-orange getups.

Court proceeded. My son got a "stay" for his inability to distinguish

right from wrong, based on low IQ, despite the clever lies and cunning cover-ups,

but this is not that soiled spoiled room; this is the law.

Still, he's been in the system since, and a part of me has died;

that part monikered "mother," that hoped, ldespaired, hoped,

that travels everywhere now in a plain in-brained hearse.

The day after court, that baby was born,

named for a vestal virgin, and time labors on.

One travels as one must, within given means.

In the end, perhaps by foot is best

feeling the earth beneath one's feet,

fully attuned to all that is passed

such as the greening up of spring --

    all of heaven's waters breaking,

        and making

          sweet unblemished grass.

Copyright Julianza Shavin 04/08