Page 56
By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Animal's surf play turns into a dreamlike transformation, moving from bird and fish imagery into burial and ship-mast visions.
The writing keeps refusing a fixed identity. He plunges like a porpoise, imagines himself a bird, becomes nearly sponge-like, and then passes into a dream where water, burial, and ship imagery overtake the body. The page's energy comes from that unstable transformation: release in the waves becomes a visionary danger.
He lunges 'sky high' against the waves and 'dove like a porpoise,' explaining 'to the sea' that he is really 'a bird' whose flapping is 'practice for flight,' and baffled that 'water was not pouring in him making of him a sponge.' His shout - 'how can the endevor of imagination dismiss the sky?' - breaks at the 'pitch where his belly finally filled with water,' and he sinks into a dream where the sea performs 'as if he were for burial' and he becomes 'the master of a ship sailing puffed salty.'