Page 186

By Jack Joseph Smith

Lean: The wilderness, and do not bring a knife to a gun fight; across the rivers, sleeping on the bank; dreaming to go down into the city The wild horse, and busted into an oak tree The last broken down car ride without a gas station,, on the prairie, huge bay skinned animals flashing,, lifted down by plateau, streams of desert make good war off the mesa; over the ridges to the hilt of the mountains, show your eyes and nose to the North star, and as a bird put your arms behind you to the Sourthern Cross, and there fly back to the sea from where you came

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page turns wilderness survival into a mythic directional map, moving from bank, prairie, mesa, ridge, North Star, Southern Cross, and sea as if a lost self could still be steered home through the sky.

The poem is expansive without becoming vague. It feels like frontier instruction rewritten as spiritual cartography.

Claude

Titled 'Lean:', this page reads like frontier survival rewritten as celestial navigation. It mixes folk caution and wilderness imagery - 'do not bring a knife / to a gun fight', 'sleeping / on the bank; dreaming to go down into the city', 'The wild horse, and busted into an oak tree', 'The last broken down car ride without a gas / station' - across prairie, plateau, mesa, and 'over the ridges to the hilt of the mountains'. The close turns the body into a compass: 'show your eyes and nose to the North star', and 'as a bird put your arms behind you to the / Sourthern Cross, and there fly back to the sea / from where you came'. Source spellings ('Sourthern Cross') and the phrase 'streams of desert make good war off the mesa' are preserved.