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By Jack Joseph Smith

Listening Isn't it watching everything Or blind and feeling Simple as a joke gone bad When you have crossed yourself, you haven't walked away The tree just turned And the water rose above your head Nothing lasted And you didn't know if it was a dream or something that came back to haunt you So you left it alone To search again like a child To find you were forbidden Just as if You had never listened At all

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

The speaker asks whether listening means watching or feeling blindly, then recounts rising water, uncertain haunting and searching like a child only to be forbidden.

The images return the addressee to a failure to listen. They do not establish a literal flood or supernatural event.

Claude

'Listening' asks 'Isn't it watching everything / Or blind and feeling', recalls 'The tree just turned / And the water rose / above your head', and ends 'Just as if / You had never listened / At all'.

A meditation on missed attention and on something half-remembered returning.