Page 66

By Jack Joseph Smith

Close Flat on the sand I say is the lowest you can get to the shadow Sinking this side of the sea shell Hovered, the hawk is gone from the mountain Now you are only one side of the sun You can not go back to theones who give in And you can't go back Even to those who take task Here you are low Thinking suble CLOSE As CLOSE as that might be

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Close brings the speaker flat on the sand and unable to go back, with sea, shell, mountain, hawk, and sun forming a one-way descent into exposure and a final handwritten insistence on closeness.

The page feels stripped down to terrain and consequence. The handwritten edits sharpen the final turn: the poem moves from being low to being close, making nearness feel like the real danger.

Claude

'Close' lays the speaker 'Flat on the sand,' the 'lowest you can get to the shadow,' where the hawk has 'gone / from the mountain' and he is 'only one side of the sun.' The poem fixes a point of no return - 'You can not go back / to theones who give in' and equally not 'to those who take task' - so being low becomes a final, exposed position. The capitalized refrain 'CLOSE / As CLOSE as that might be' turns nearness itself into the only achievement left, intimacy and dead-end fused.