Page 183
By Jack Joseph Smith
Getting old High
Someone take the boat of the water
Someone take the latter off the the ground
Someone take the bridge away
Someone take the mills
Now we sit through all of it
and it never leaves
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
GPT
The poem imagines the removal of a boat, a ladder, a bridge, and mills, yet insists that what they represent never actually leaves, turning industry and passage into permanent psychic structures.
Its plainness gives it force. The scan-supported oddities make the removals feel more handmade and local, while the ending treats disappearance as something memory cannot complete.
Claude
Getting old High. Someone take the boat off the water; someone take the ladder off the ground; someone take the bridge away; someone take the mills. Now we sit through all of it and it never leaves. Stripped of tools and infrastructure, presence is the remainder.