Fishing Outside Of Time

By Jack Joseph Smith

At the sensation of the final fatal fall Before the beneath of the bog Where a fisherman boy's reel Reels his elbow into the greatness:of a Bluegill Béfore-the knowledge of Plankton This boy is a vision of grandeur While the nouveau-riche industriel science salesman Jets across the long exhaust marked sky Split second the pilot crossed’ the pond Of a lilly banked liquid mud clovered round” Bubble sucked ‘at the center however By deeply drawing reflective holes of water Where respected whirl pools twirl Their inch at the surface Will these fast silver men across the sun Passing natural cylinders swirling forces Into bottomless wells that have exits; But they are to nowhere when one gets there Will they ever come to know about death Béing at the edge’of being a child? The boy at this moment dosen't care to share Any approach of sight with the speed of light The boy's mind is too busy going down. With his feet on the ground

Original Scan

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AI Interpretation

GPT

A boy fishing at a pond is set against the industrial speed of jet pilots and silver men crossing the sun, making childhood absorption in nature a form of resistance to modernity's velocity and its ignorance of death.

Claude

The title names exactly what the boy achieves — he is outside of time, his mind going down with the Bluegill into reflective holes of water while silver men jet across the sun overhead. The poem's question ('Will they ever come to know about death / Being at the edge of being a child?') is rhetorical but not dismissive: the fast silver men have exits but arrive nowhere, while the boy's feet are on the ground. To fish outside of time is to know death by standing at its edge — which is what childhood, before the knowledge of Plankton, already was.