The Prison Warden

Tiptoeing through the sands of time,

I found her hand firmly entwined with mine;

the blood clot in my brain started dissolving away,

that fateful day the angelic face in the crowd made my head sway;

From then on I was eating her love porridge from a ladle,

it was as if I had been waiting for this benediction since my time in the cradle;

the voice so sweet it had the nectar of the gods beat a dismayed retreat,

the smile so disarming it could mellow even the most treacherous of assassins to drop their sabres and spit out their deceit;

These though were god endowed attributes that were superficial,

what she had cultivated underneath this veneer of beauty and grace made her even more special;

The compassion in that beautiful heart saw goodness even in the quagmire of evil,

she fought tooth and nail every living moment to snatch lost souls away from the clutches of the devil;

That heart of gold would cry tears of blood without seeking permission,

anytime she witnessed a fellow human being in despair, distress or destitution;

She would roll up her sleeves and go to battle at the slightest hint of injustice,

She was ready to go up in flames to defend the marginalized from new year’s eve to winter solstice;

She understood that the prison system not only incarcerates the body but also the soul,

It is mostly a ‘penitentiary’ and not a ‘correctional’ which leaves a gaping hole;

She was a like a silver lining in this big dark cloud,

A figure of authority who was neither heartless nor loud;

She would not give up on these ‘lost souls’ even if the whole world had forsaken them,

reform, remedy, retrain and reset were her objectives for these imperfect men and women;

“The almighty made human beings, the society dehumanizes some, so isn’t it society’s responsibility to re-humanize them?” she would often wonder out loud,

She understood many of her charges would have a lifetime of confinement and contrition ahead for their wrongdoings but still wanted to give them a second chance to make their maker proud;

She kept them away from the scourge of drugs and internecine bloodletting by training their sinews and gray matter on a vocation,

She gave them an opportunity to pursue education which gave them a sense of purpose and self-worth despite their malefactions and in this implausible location;

Making toys, making paper products, weaving mats or growing produce in the prison garden,

She is the epitome of what every prisoner all over the world deserves in their prison warden.