Page 63

By Jack Joseph Smith

Quiting As far as you can go Itis hard to tell You can reap what you sow And you can look back and know You can be alone and work You can be a sholder or bandit too At any time you can hawk find it Or let it go for your will, let it show Think or draw yourself aside Or walk down to you feet No side of you left to split Hands above to God are gone you thought Is all the thought so, low Where danger is not alone...

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This page turns quitting into a rough inventory of options, fractures, and lingering danger.

The poem sounds practical at first, then opens into something more spiritually stripped down. By the end, the speaker seems to be testing whether withdrawal is freedom or just another exposure.

Claude

'Quiting' (title misspelled as written) weighs withdrawal as both freedom and exposure. It begins in proverb -- 'As far as you can go / Itis hard to tell / You can reap what you sow / And you can look back and know' -- then lays out a menu of identities and choices: 'You can be alone and work / You can be a sholder or bandit too,' and 'At any time you can hawk find it / Or let it go for your will.' The middle strips the self toward a spiritual nakedness -- 'No side of you left to split / Hands above to God are gone' -- where even prayer has lapsed. The handwritten 'you thought' (preserved per scan review) breaks in before the unsettled close, 'Is all the thought so, low / Where danger is not alone...' leaving quitting as an open question rather than a resolution. Source spellings 'Itis,' 'sholder,' and 'you feet' are kept verbatim.