Page 30

By Jack Joseph Smith

Where Life Is Wood. Splitting oak and cherry, even elm and madrono, All sections Sycamore across the continent to fur Douglas as giant as redwood, and the famished unknown you can across the country slap from underneath; and you can get strange with the chills PLACE YOU NEED TO BE EXACT ABOUT when you talk to Christ, as if he were a tree Sleep has not been sure for years; like any branch, thinking about yourself is the very last thing, of your concern, as wood knows as well, that being legal, having a hold, repeats itself underneath You can't quit being alive with wood, you have to parish, unless among your growth someone stops you, cuts you apart AS YOUR OWN, So if you can say that you have never been knocked down, or gone back on your word, then YOU ARE wood

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This longer page combines timber, Christ, survival, and growth into a harsh doctrine of persistence.

The poem keeps returning to wood because it offers both burden and example. The restored closing continuation matters because it sharpens the metaphor: life is not something you can quit, only something that can cut through you even as you grow.

Claude

The fullest draft of 'Where Life Is Wood', fusing the timber catalog and the credo into one harsher whole. The species list scales upward - oak, cherry, elm, 'madrono', sycamore, then 'fur / Douglas as giant as redwood' - before the 'famished / unknown' and a turn toward the sacred: you 'get strange with the / chills' when 'you talk to Christ, / as if he were a tree'. The handwritten insertion 'PLACE YOU NEED TO BE EXACT ABOUT' (replacing a struck 'somewhere') interrupts that line, and the typed 'branch' replaces a struck 'tree'. The doctrine sharpens: 'You can't quit being alive with wood, / you have to parish', unless someone in your 'growth' 'cuts you apart / AS YOUR OWN' - possession claimed over the living thing. The closing test, 'never been / knocked down, or gone back on your word, / then YOU ARE wood', is restated in the page's emphatic capitals. Source spellings 'madrono', 'parish' (for perish), and the scan case are preserved. This reading is provisional because the page is mixed-band, flagged for follow-up, and many handwritten side notes remain unresolved.