Page 173

By Jack Joseph Smith

Distant Three steps across the hard wood hall Here he comes, twelve, I don't know He comes into. the room he’s got* power. Call it what you want; he remembers iti That is not natural, that is unusual Some know how to watch seconds, really alot ‘off them understand time: . This is trouple, I have never felt . anything like it} I was four years old watching my Irish Mom ery over. FLD. R".. death Of course I am not going to re-inact all that I have seem; but I need to say to you,, that right now, in our [ time,, im your time, and your family's time; this the most dangerous, this is 2 jul the worst. I love you.and. be

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

"Distant" turns a boy’s charged entrance into a warning shaped by old grief, insisting that the present danger surpasses even the family catastrophe the speaker first witnessed as a child.

The poem begins with a hard domestic scene and immediately gives the twelve-year-old an almost frightening command of the room. That force unlocks the speaker’s memory of his mother crying over a dead son, so the page measures one threat against another across generations. Its ending feels like a broken-off blessing, trying to protect someone while admitting that language may not be enough.

Claude

Distant: three steps across the hardwood hall, he's got power, remembers things not naturally. Four years old watching his Irish Mom cry over F.D.R.'s death. This is the most dangerous, I love you.