Page 420

By Jack Joseph Smith

Basic Dad One,, two, three; falling in love is easy Four, five, six and seven, war is a hard way to begin Eight, nine, ten and eleven, PLACES OF DANGER I try and watch you through your path, Then there is twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, - These trips will become The stations of the cross: And if ever in your time You have felt loss It is certain That you don't have it now

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page counts upward through love, war, travel, and loss, turning a simple number sequence into a hard spiritual itinerary.

The counting gives the poem a nursery-rhyme surface, but it keeps darkening until the trips become stations of the cross. The closing turns loss into a test of whether the reader still possesses anything at all.

Claude

''''Basic Dad' -- counting from one to fourteen, each grouping marked: falling in love is easy, war is hard to begin, places of danger, stations of the cross. 'If ever in your time / You have felt loss / It is certain / That you don't have it now.''''