Page 241

By Jack Joseph Smith

In The Saddle Again The ground is the sky when you get on a colt, and she is bucking right nose to nose, off filling my head To give up on the hour glass where I have come to see the hands of time, and stop recognizing life, through the eye I've lost; the peace, on top of the rectangular tractor; the consintration of any oval furnace, the horse shoes I would not toss You can slip one second when there is evil under the earth, but when it is from your own, you still CAN be angry or you can be sad

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Riding overturns the world into sky and tractor-metal geometry, then ends in a blunt choice about how to answer the evil that rises from one's own ground.

The title sounds almost jaunty, but the page is really about disorientation and moral recoil. The colt turns the world over, while the tractor, furnace, and horseshoes keep the poem grounded in worked material and labor. The final handwritten coda sharpens everything: evil from beneath the earth is one thing, but evil from one's own place demands a harder emotional decision.

Claude

In The Saddle Again makes a moral pivot on the last three lines: evil outside you gives you a second to slip, but evil from your own people leaves only anger or sadness. The bucking colt, lost eye, and rectangular tractor are all scene-setting for that choice.