By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A short poem about being turned toward another person in the middle of danger, confusion, and instinct.
Its repetition makes it feel incantatory, as if orientation toward another life is the only stable fact left.
She turned to me in the middle of the wild river — the poem repeats this action until it becomes incantation. In a collection full of spiritual and intellectual complexity, this poem reduces everything to a single gesture: another person turning toward you when the current is strongest.
The repetition is not emphasis but necessity. The speaker needs to say it again because saying it once was not enough to hold the reality of the moment, which keeps threatening to be swept away by the same river it names.