He shuffled his feet

like a short man who

had suffered a stroke

or a drunk trying to

find his way home,

except the exception

is the rule. In winter

clothing, it was a

child who tossed a

snowball onto the side-

walk just in front of

himself and stood silent

as it smashed. He even

may have thought of a

bomb dropping and

said, “Boom,” as

it splattered in front

of him. And then the

bullets smashed into

his twelve-year-old

body like one of the

boy soldiers of Africa

or Iraq or Afghanistan

except it was in a park

on a wintry November

day in Cleveland, the

US of A. The police were

told a shuffling, black man

was seen in a park brandish-

ing a lethal weapon. The kid

could have been playing

cops and robbers with his

pellet gun, but the cops

certainly weren’t playing

around or playing fair as

it turns out. The tape shows

it. No metaphors here.

Just a tape of the incident.

Score one for technology

as the keeper of justice.

Eye-witness reports have

been proven so unreliable.

So much for what we see.

“Just give me the facts, ma’am,”

old Jack Webb used to say

on T.V.