creative writing

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Our motto is a tribute to “the Greatest”:

“The service you do for others is the rent you pay for the time you spend on earth.” Muhammad Ali

O, brazen leaves, boldly rustling in the north breeze.

Will not quite give it up!
Life ebbing; dry, wrinkled, lifeless looking.
Yet the will to be remains.

O, brazen leaves, resisting the autumnal prerogative.

Hanging on! Resisting the forces of time,
Somehow hoping time will stop; a moment frozen
to keep forever, like summer in the Arctic climes.

O, brazen leaves, dried and brown.

Knowing deep down that as the other leaves have died
and fallen to the ground,
so will the rest that still hang on.

O, brazen leaves, that know not time nor temerity.

Heavenly hope having high expectations,
half-dead; yet noisy, cajoling, like a good group of friends.
Pushing one to ponder this visible proof of rebirth, of resurrection.

O, brazen leaves, boldly rustling.

First of all, I have been a correctional public health dentist for 20+ years. Some days are busy, some downright exciting. But when a correctional facility is locked down, the day can drag on and on. It was on one of those days that this story takes place.

I was fortunate to have 2 dental students doing a summer internship with me. They gain experience and more patients get treatment. And these two gentlemen loved it. I called them Hans and Franz, more like brothers than colleagues. Enthusiastic, they came to “pump you up”, in the words of an old SNL skit. They competed at everything. They rented an empty, run-down apartment that smelled like cat urine so that they could get free green fees at the apartment owner’s golf course. And they played their version of the British Open, the Masters, and the Ryder cup all wrapped into one. Everyday.

Each morning the one who lost the evening before was subdued, almost to the point of pouting. “Hans, you kept talking in my backswing.” Or “Franz, you know I had a GI problem but you only gave me three strokes.” This was not the only competition: who saw the most patients, who did the most procedures, who has the smelliest patient.

On the day of the unending boredom, Hans and Franz came to the rescue. They created a new indoor competitive sport called the dental luge. Dental assistant chairs have excellent, smooth-running casters, and ours were new. After much heated negotiations over the ground rules, the competition began. The competitors used the doorway of the dental lab to propel themselves perched on a dental assistant chair through the four chair clinic. No extraneous body movements were allowed! Just the initial thrust of using both arms to explode out of the gate.

Two assistants lost their balance and actually tumbled over. One of the contestants went aerodynamic by wearing a protective visor to streamline his body contours. Most ran into the xray unit or ran out of steam about 2/3 down the clinic. It was Hans’ turn as he made a supreme effort of controlled power with purposeful balance. He just kept rolling and made down past all 4 chairs to the doorway of the dentist’s private office. “Yeaaah! Who’s your daddy?” and other such lines were heard from Hans. He had it won baby!

But not so fast, for “it ain’t over till the fat lady says it’s over.” With the imagined theme from Chariots of Fire filling the background, Franz entered the lab doorway, eyeing the course with a seemingly practiced eye. A hush filled the clinic as Franz rolled once, then twice in warmup before letting go on the third pull. He began a roll as unlikely as Tiger Wood’s putt on the 16th at Augusta, snaking his way down the clinic. The spectators gasp as Franz drifts ever so close to the xray unit. But like a NASCAR driver next to wall, he didn’t panic or flinch. He just kept rolling, he rolled to the doorway of the private office, through the doorway and into the office! Not finished yet, he continued through another doorway, past the bathroom and into the mechanical service room where his “luge” came to rest.

You may speak of the great individual achievements in the history of competitive sports but now you know of an achievement never to be topped, little known and much maligned, Franz’s indoor dental luge record setting run!

Stoic external.
Officiousness imprinted in the bricks and imposing entry edifice.
Institutional architecture, rising in front,
as one walks the walk.

I go voluntarily; many others do not.
Through sallyports, clanging automatic heavy metal grills.
Then, a hush; contrasting quiet to the cacophony of clanging
down the corridors of convicts.

In a short walk, one leaves a world of unimpeded movement
and open possibilities. Joining the throngs of the misused and users,
liars and thieves; Addicts all…
Addicted to power, violence, drugs. CONVICTED.

Welcoming from the gatekeeper and the keeper of the keys.
Everyday the same question, “Will I be their prey today?”
Safety requires it, sanity precludes it.
And so, I pray today.

Fear shown is a loss of control, a giving away of oneself.
Compassion, caring, freely given is a gaining of control-
the reason to be here.
In a short walk, I can choose to make a difference for better,
to give this walk meaning and significance.

Rajor wire, M16’s, pepper gas and riot batons.
Shanks, hooch, shakedown, lockdown.
Death row.
A short walk.