Page 19

By Jack Joseph Smith

Greatgrandpa told them to leave those up streams alone down here in the coal anthracite town, and I said I am afraid of that ravene, and when our favorite mule went down I screemed harder than heaven at it's stark blue eyes sancken in the mud as wach withh the boards of pine and willow scrub and there I saw the sorrow swell as the waves shot through the levlys; it was when the reeds turned up like thousands of excaped convicts swallowed for the last time, and I loved the gester you would make about finding me no matter how lost I got, and now I can not, will not find you, yey are you not something you never thought of, a piece, not a speck, an eye of beauty when your fight is gone. Anthracite

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Grandfather's warning about the streams opens into a coal-town elegy of ravines, levees, a drowning mule, and the unbearable knowledge that the beloved can no longer be found.

The poem is full of collapse: animals sink, reeds rise like convicts, and grief swells as if the whole watershed has become a body in distress. Family speech still tries to impose order, but the town's sorrow keeps overwhelming instruction. The handwritten Anthracite tag grounds the page in coal-country memory, while the closing image of beauty appearing only after the fight is gone makes peace feel inseparable from disappearance.

Claude

Greatgrandpa's warning to 'leave those up streams / alone' in 'the coal anthracite town' frames a child's terror of the 'ravene' and the drowning of 'our / favorite mule,' whose 'stark blue eyes sancken in the mud' make the speaker 'screem harder than / heaven.' Grief 'swell as the waves shot / through the levlys,' the reeds rising 'like thousands of excaped convicts swallowed for / the last time.' What he most cannot recover is the 'gester you would / make about finding me no matter how lost I got,' and the handwritten 'Anthracite' tag roots it all in coal country.