Page 409

By Jack Joseph Smith

I have never seen priceless things and priceless people happen before THEY WERE THERE and thought I was not going to have anything to think about, until I saw her standing against the tree. and don't get me wrong, I am making sure that I don't miss anything, it is not easy not changing; tough in one place, no matter where it is, somehow courage has one like their surroundings Maybe it is better not to go, but on the road in America, nothing is better than that, it is called earn the right to sing a song

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This road-and-tree page treats courage, priceless people, and America as things one must earn through movement and attention rather than inherit.

The handwritten THEY / WERE / THERE makes the remembered presence more explicit. The speaker keeps returning to the same ethic: the right to sing comes after the road, not before it.

Claude

A road-poem about presence and earned vision. The speaker has 'never seen priceless things / and priceless people happen before', and the handwritten margin shout 'THEY / WERE / THERE' breaks into the typed line to insist on the reality of that witnessed moment - the turn coming when 'I saw her standing against the tree'. He guards his attention - 'I am making / sure that I don't miss anything' - and admits 'it / is not easy not changing', noting how 'somehow courage has one like their / surroundings'. The ethic lands in the close: leaving might be wiser, 'but / on the road in America, nothing is / better than that', because the road is how you 'earn / the right to sing a song'.