By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A Southern Cross and one second past God send the speaker into flight through trains, buses, Eden, Christ, refusal, and the early-night knowledge of real fear.
The handwritten Southern Cross line pushes the page toward navigation and omen before the typed poem begins its sequence of departures. Christ and Eden appear not as safe destinations but as overwhelming recognitions that arrive before consent. Saying no after sliding from the pickup preserves a narrow selfhood, yet that refusal is exactly where fear becomes most real.
A second 'Flight' adds navigation and omen -- the handwritten 'A Southern Cross past God' before 'One second, past God / He left it all.' The departures repeat (train, bus, 'a shore; / then a cast away'), but revelation arrives unbidden: 'I did not have a chance, / when I saw Christ', and 'It was definately / the garden of Eden.' Selfhood narrows to a refusal -- 'I slid off the back / of a pick up truck,, and said no, / I'can not come to you' -- and that refusal is exactly where 'I knew real fear...'