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| Screenshot provided by the poet’s son from the video he recorded. |
My son told me
he’d put on his vest and
hooked the phone into the chest pocket facing out,
pressed video, then strode across the narrow city street.
That was his spontaneous choice,
just home from his night shift,
after parking his car across from his apartment,
after seeing two masked figures accost a person on the sidewalk.
In his paramedic suit and bullet proof vest with the phone-on-video,
he told them his name and pointed to his photo badge.
He asked them to identify themselves,
looked at their badges—photo-less, flimsy,
“Those could be printed on Etsy,” he said, “How do I know who you are?”
They would not answer. But he got the name of the person they were taking,
who gave it to him freely.
My son yelled at the masked faces, “Take off your masks.
Show us who you are.”
And he yelled it again, venting his anger at their secrecy
at their silence
at their unjust power—
then it was over.
They had shoved the man into their unmarked car and were driving away.
My son told me
that’s when he let loose the language he’d wanted to spit in their faces.
He threw it at their backs, watching the car disappear,
then stood there on the sidewalk,
next to the door to the stairs leading to his apartment,
and called the police.
He waited for them to come so he could report the incident.
A paramedic, he would speak his truth,
“to serve human need, with respect for human dignity,”
and he would wonder what would happen
to the man he would never see again
whose name he would never forget
Judy Strang lives in the woods of Amherst County, VA, where she writes creative nonfiction, directs the Sourwood Forest artist residency program for the Pedlar River Institute, and works part time for the Harte Center for Teaching & Learning at Washington & Lee University (Lexington, VA). Her creative nonfiction, including What Holds Us Here: pieces from a place in the woods (Blackwell Press 2023), examines how humans understand (or not) their place within more-than-human nature.
