By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Earth, water, and fire are treated as one real order where leaving vanishes, colorless sight closes distance, and a child with a bucket hears weather promise relief.
The refusal of pretending makes the poem sound almost corrective, stripping away social scenery like mansion and alley. Thoughts at a distance and thoughts directly before you are finally said to be the same, which collapses spiritual scale into ordinary perception. The child who cannot cry but still carries the bucket gives the closing weather promise a hard-earned tenderness.
A corrective vision that strips away pretense: 'This Earth, water, and fire... / There is no coming and going / Therefore leaving does not exist'. Social scenery falls away -- whether 'shinning it on in a mansion / or looking the other way in an alley', 'the one without a color sees'. It restates the page sequence's signature paradox, that 'a thought that has distance' and 'a thought right in front of you' are 'the same', 'the greatest image of all'. The close earns its tenderness hard: 'In the air when a child can't cry / carrying the bucket / wherr enough of life / say's the weather is gonna get better'.