By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A watchful poem about death, vigilance, and the ache of almost-recognition in a place where strangers barely exist.
A poem of hard-won clarity in which the speaker, once 'on the natch / watching the universe,' now 'can not search anymore / because I know exactly what it is.' What she knows is 'Living with death on purpose,' tied without explanation to 'what children are for,' and the work closes on the rare appearance of 'a stranger' she mourns 'As if I had a life long friend gone now.'
'On the natch' (straight, sober, alert) frames the early watching as a clean-eyed vigil that has now ended not in despair but in certainty - the searching stops because the answer arrived. That answer, 'Living with death on purpose,' is set flatly beside 'what children are for,' refusing to spell out the link and leaving the reader to feel the grim continuity between birth and dying in this place. The middle is pure rural survival-superstition: anything 'dead along the creek' sends her on a 'hike / up to the water fall,' turning avoidance of death into a daily ritual of choosing higher, moving water. The ending is the emotional payload - 'a stranger' is 'Very unusual / Around here,' and her impulse to greet him collapses immediately into grief, mourning a connection 'As if I had a life long friend gone now,' so that even a wished-for friendship is experienced in the past tense, already lost. The spellings 'natch' and 'definately' are the source's own and carry the spoken voice; I have kept them.