Page 373
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Solitary travel teaches love of women, recalls ten meaningful years of flight, and sees the lost as people beaten and bent long before the fall.
The opening turns independence into perception: being alone lets desire become observation rather than possession. The winding way to hell and the call to come back give the poem a rescuing impulse, though it never pretends rescue is easy. The final lines refuse simple blame by locating ruin earlier, in beatings and distortions that happened before collapse became visible.
You don't know you love all women until you start out alone; alone is not all-time but works now and again. Watched them walk the winding way to hell and asked them back from the lowest place. Ten years when flight actually meant something; met people lost but beaten and turned out before they fell.