Page 54

By Jack Joseph Smith

Even. There isn't even one low line drawn that makes us ever As a child I have seen the finest waterfalls and streams, and knew them without expression,, that nothing was even The Moon and the Sun they are still the same to us, are never ever even, falling Peabbles and stones as seamen too, walk with you, make thought, ever as you get Children always see to yourself I am an aristract, who wished something could have been done about it Many a bear I've seen just at one time Memory is more than just a dream Leaving things go is a mistake While passing things on is good. If at Equal time we were always fifty feet above Would we not always know we were crawling through grass and concrete, EVEN

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

Waterfalls, streams, Sun, Moon, memory, and inheritance widen the poem into a meditation on what remains while human life crawls through grass and concrete.

The page moves between natural scale and human scale: waterfalls, streams, Moon, Sun, bears, memory, grass, and concrete all test what can be called even. The corrected nothing was even line makes equality and imbalance more explicit, while the page's revisions keep leaving, passing on, and falling unsettled.

Claude

The title's claim of evenness is tested and denied: 'There isn't even one low line drawn that makes us ever', and 'The Moon and the Sun ... are never ever even'. The child-self 'knew them without expression,, that nothing was even', and the poem weighs inheritance -- 'Leaving things go is a mistake / While passing things on is good' -- before its leveling close, that even fifty feet up 'Would we not always know we were crawling / through grass and concrete, EVEN'. This reading remains provisional because the page transcript is OCR-uncertain and handwritten/crossed material (around through/slaughtering, the Moon/Sun line, and the inserted 'Equal') is unresolved.