By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
This late-address poem offers risk as the only worthwhile answer to youth, freedom, hell, and aging.
The voice is direct and almost advisory, but it never becomes bland encouragement. `Getting old is another trick` keeps the poem wary, so the closing reassurance feels earned by experience rather than sentimentality.
A title that frames the poem as a final accounting, then spends ten lines reframing recklessness as wisdom. Youth is licensed to squander chances ('let the three chances go by'), suffering is rebranded as agency ('going through hell / Is a plan!:'), and age is demoted to a 'trick / Possibly the last one.' The hanging colon after 'plan' is the poem's oddest gesture, opening onto the bare imperatives 'Take the risk / You'll be alright' - comfort offered by a voice too clear-eyed to fully believe it.