Old and figured over from a life in the basement,
he sat under the judge, deaf to paper shuffling, jabs
from the jury, the thousand flashes of cameras,
holding his figurine, a dancing Sambo he made
in the long hours after he forgot what day meant to night,
how the evening sounds of street life became the swirl
and slosh of puddles in a city under the metropolis,
a summary of his dreams of shuffling about from glad
hand to glad hand until he fell down the looking glass
into surrender. The day they came to tear down his
shack of books and marked spaces in reason, he asked
if he could see these things he had heard so much about
from those who went up on the streets from time
to time, these machines that did everything, that had
made keyboards an entry into a dream of the mind,
and they showed him a laptop with a bright apple
on the cover, he in turn gave them a figurine,
a favorite one of a watermelon he had made, as big
as his hand, with Go down Moses carved in cursive
the way they used to do in grade school with practice paper.
Old and figured over from a life in the basement,
he had taken time to study gratitude, smiling when he
handed them the fruit, breaking the perfection of this space
made from the invisible energy, the light that made light,
and he was led off to face years of stealing from ConEd,
to pay his bill finally, to make the accounts balanced,
found out as he was by these little machines, these
minds inside the mind made real by the imprint of an apple
meant to say paradise had been made violate for greater
good, for the lost trumpet sounds of feet in rivers below,
rivers above, glad moments in wires crisscrossing the heart.