A Siobhan Poem

By Jack Joseph Smith

To know justice in my name I grew out of the taste in the sand In a place film recommends As the wildest in the western world The ocean is a fear for those whose feelings fail To acknowledge the beginnings of fire in the soul But I watched white birds cover colors and crests While the mystic sense of the sea's, hovering creation, hurt then. healed For my small hand seized thoughts attended by the wind, when reguarding purpose rather than a yearning distance Long before I was born to dance my way out of walking; ‘even computers began to contrive my father as nomadic (Perhaps seeing with the same four seasons only desperate women and weak men was too painful under his sun) Yet I wanted a strong dad So I could kick his shins And poke his eyes out too (How smart is societys!' voice, Tike in a chant ‘ a when living infinity isn't a choice) Sometime after speech made paragraphs, out of give, get, gallant, and gain;
I saw signs that to find and to mean, and to yield unity, survives lost at sea or about the personage of the stars, come to Earth's soil as deliberate human lifes I did see life stay up to unchanging remains of passion And yes go down to the vast waters of individual tears I later understood indications that suggested my father might have for a moment been as smart as a dog in danger And when I saw other men guarding with their offspring, I noticed a family where power had not become a stranger Still he did not turm objective like a detective om television Or take seriously American cities fighting with sportsfigures As I would not listen attentively to religion dropping names For every word of it was dumb in daylight or darkmess Put against what the deep mind can find in its dreams Finally talent determined a structure for being left half alone And apart from spells that spun his thoughts backward in action, at least my art would allow a father who had never been my home And if comprehending msic is anything like embracing reason, then tuning loose strings as a start toward true sound, is like tying life's wmcompromising facts into a story that works (Yet we will be more than the wisdom of certain birds, that recognize the motives of humans when they are watched) Simply with the birth that drives through the earth; : the kmowing of youth
And now may all sweet song gather my grasp on worldly wings Held by my mother's gift of the anciemt Gaelic, given in quiet, to guide my temperment in my time Through what is creative in the history of my life Which first is to love Siobhan, and then to let her smile at her consequence.

Original Scan

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AI Interpretation

GPT

A three-page lyric of fatherhood, inheritance, and creative identity, in which a daughter named Siobhan grows from sand and sea-wind into artistic selfhood, reckoning with an absent father while claiming her mother's gift of ancient Gaelic as the foundation of her own voice.

The poem moves through elemental imagery — ocean, fire, wind, earth — to trace the arc from birth to self-determination, making family history and personal creativity inseparable.

Claude

The poem is named for the daughter but built around the father's absence — and the space that absence creates is where Siobhan's selfhood takes root. 'I wanted a strong dad / So I could kick his shins / And poke his eyes out too' is not rage but strategy: the child needs resistance in order to grow. The arc moves from sand and sea-wind through the recognition that her father 'might have for a moment been as smart as a dog in danger,' arriving finally at the mother's gift of ancient Gaelic — quiet, guiding, sufficient — as the foundation for a life that will be 'more than the wisdom of certain birds.'

The poem's most structurally daring move is its parenthetical asides — '(How smart is society's voice, / like in a chant / when living infinity isn't a choice)' — which function as the daughter's own interruptions of the father-poem, claiming space within a text that is nominally about her but that she is already authoring.