Page 18

By Jack Joseph Smith

The Holler I took my rifel in and walked out of the trees without my feet weet; however I saw the glimmer all the time, through all that was said I see a river running through the shale no matter where the owners applied thir vision, I saw sequence split little by little like a thousand belly frogs Yaking to get through, and even before we walked there I always thought that Wyoming was far more romantic than the Moon, I realize you watch me as foolish in the bush; assuriadly I have never gone over for a snake in the stream, I have shot a wild deer dowm, the timing true, but I did not take the time to walk with you, and how far away are you now, The smell has changed along the banks; in the old days you brought a stone home to show where you had been

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

"The Holler" follows a rifle-bearing speaker through shale, stream, and memory until hunting, ownership, romance, and regret collapse into the ache of having failed to walk beside someone now far away.

The glimmer in the woods feels constant, as if the land keeps revealing a truth that human claims of ownership cannot contain. Deer, snakes, Wyoming, and the Moon all become measures of masculine fantasy, but the emotional break comes with the admission that he did not take the time to walk with "you." The changed smell along the banks makes loss physical and local, not abstract.

Claude

The Holler sets up the wider watershed arc: rifel, the glimmer through shale, Wyoming more romantic than the Moon. The smell has changed along the banks becomes the return motif.