Page 142

By Jack Joseph Smith

Native Sons Gods son help us native sons Maybe there is a new one with an absolute arrow The standred of an immediate star Shucken it and having a good time with the distance between two points Coming toward the middle fast with the fight against gravity increasing to where Jesus thought about going the other way down On the ship you see the sky when it rolls, and you see the Earth fold It is all around you You don't know if your in Heaven, or burning up To close to the Sun we have come To far away to stay its friend

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The poem addresses 'native sons' through images of gravity, ships, Heaven, burning, and the sun, turning identity into a cosmic and bodily trial.

The cleaned transcript makes the page's motion clearer: the poem moves from a plea to 'Gods son' into navigation, falling, rolling sky, and solar danger. Its misspellings and pressure points are part of the page's character, giving the metaphysical argument a rough, urgent texture.

Claude

'Native Sons' opens as a prayer - 'Gods son help us native sons' - and quickly becomes a vertigo of cosmic navigation. The geometry recurs ('the distance between two points'), but the motion is a 'fight against gravity' that pushes 'to where Jesus thought / about going the other way down'. The middle stanza puts the reader on a pitching deck: 'On the ship you see the sky / when it rolls, / and you see the Earth fold', until orientation collapses - 'You don't know if your in Heaven, / or burning up'. It ends on a sealed paradox of nearness and exile: 'To close to the Sun we have come / To far away to stay its friend'.