By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The crows nest becomes Sue's center, a place of repeated restarting where workplace misjudgment cannot stop the quiet material and living world swirling around her.
The crows nest is both lookout and inner perch, the place from which she goes as far as possible and still returns to begin again. "Nothing on purpose" gives her process an instinctive, almost tidal quality rather than a program. Being misjudged at work matters less than the field of objects and living things that continue to move around her as if organized by her presence.
The 'crows nest' gives Sue a vantage that is also a center: she goes 'out as far as she can go' and comes 'back to where she is certain / of starting a new start / over and over again.' The poem prizes this as 'Nothing on purpose,' an instinctive rhythm that gets her 'misjudged at the work place,' yet the closing image redeems her - all things, both 'obviously material' and 'quietally living,' 'swirl about her' as though she were their quiet axis.