By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Five pennies become a nickle in a child's pants, and that tiny exchange opens a meditation on mind, possession, and the repeated human power to add or subtract.
The childhood bank exchange turns value into something bodily and slightly comic, sitting in the pants before it turns into stash. From there the poem shifts to an old claim about good and evil, but locates the real act in the mind that counts, hoards, gives, and takes away. Full poclets make morality feel repetitive and transactional rather than grand.
Titled 'Choise,' the poem starts from a child's small banking miracle - 'I take five pennies to the bank / They give me a nickle / It is in my pants' - making value bodily and faintly comic. From that exchange it pivots to ethics: 'Good and evil / Exist within / The nature of man / But it is the mind / That makes it so,' locating morality in interpretation rather than essence. The close makes choice transactional and recurring: 'Now my poclets are full / Full enough to stash / And start again / And again until / I give or take away.' Source spellings 'Choise,' 'nickle,' and 'poclets' are preserved.