Page 5

By Jack Joseph Smith

5 He came low meeting my eyes, with his fingers in the grass supporting his body like a halfback, Two, I answered. My father nodding his leaf shadowed bald head rising, with the sun singing it's acknowledgment to my blindness, through the leaves, branchesy and flowers: of the Dog Wood trees, He was asking my mother, calling her Mary, if she wanted to go in, but she could only say so sweetly how beautifully shiney the Rhodendrum weres They looked like-orchid's, under our front’ small. cut . .: diamond shaped*windows:waiting to be pinned ona soft girl after-a fall: football game, Let's be walking-around zo the back yard Rudy, .before we-go ing So -we-walked pase the garage-door, around 40 the small’sidewalk, that ran tecyhe side-cf our home, where-the neighbors:follage-was-close comeing. over: a falling-rusty fences My father could touch the rain troufh hanging from the shingled garage roof’ slanting so lows Me coming around to the back brown. Rrench kitchen door; and up close-trying-to jump up and see 4hrough it'a squared‘window pains-of back of the house mystery.’ My father picking me-up and put@ing me away from the door near the fence and follages He was watching my mother walking into the back yard, .when I heard him say, now trys My eyes jumping level with the beginnings of the windew pains-and me feeling: big, but: seeing nothing; I jumped again and saw everything-beeome-nothing;.I jumped” again-and againmy eyes flashing with the windewss I had jumped alot, when I leoked up at my father speaking; Did you see anything? Yess I just‘know I dids I just:know-I aids 2a

Original Scan

Page 5

AI Interpretation

GPT

Father and child circle the house together, counting dogwoods and arriving at the back door where the child jumps again and again trying to glimpse the mystery inside.

The writing stays close to scale and sensation: leaves, rhododendrons, fence rust, rain trough, window panes, the lift of the father's hands. What matters is not whether anything is actually seen through the glass, but the child's insistence that vision and discovery have already begun.

Claude

The dogwood-and-rhododendron walk continues with father lifting Michael to the kitchen window — the three jumps that see nothing, then everything become nothing, then everything flashing — an early record of the child's eye learning to dissolve what it looks at.