Page 243

By Jack Joseph Smith

The Saddle Again In the saddle again, and she is bucking right in front of me and filling my mind I' have come to see an hour glass to be the sands of time And I keep on recognizing life through the eye I have lost The peace of the rectangular tractor The consintration of a ships oval furnace The horse shoes I wouldn't toss away from the keg The barefoot football I would not jealous run or catch Now she has my broken leg into the stirrup Up and over the rig Without a hitch

Original Scan

Page 243

AI Interpretation

GPT

The saddle poem widens into tractors, furnaces, horseshoes, football, and a broken leg lifted into the stirrup, making damage and labor part of one continuing ride.

The rectangular tractor and oval furnace bring industrial shapes into the same field as horse tack, so the poem keeps crossing farm, ship, and body. Several rejected objects and actions accumulate like a life inventory, each one held in memory rather than discarded. When the broken leg is taken up without a hitch, pain is absorbed into motion instead of stopping it.


Claude

'The Saddle Again' opens out the bucking lyric into an inventory of kept and refused things: 'The peace of the rectangular tractor,' 'The consintration of a ships oval furnace,' 'The horse shoes I wouldn't toss / away from the keg,' 'The barefoot football I would not jealous / run or catch.' Damage is folded into motion at the end - 'Now she has my broken leg into the stirrup / Up and over the rig / Without a hitch' - so the injured rider is lifted back into the ride rather than stopped by the break.