By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
In North Nevada, a war-returned presence appears in a double take, beyond belief and stronger than dreams, standing before the speaker with permanent, unbookish force.
The handwritten location gives the apparition a physical place before the typed poem turns it into an enduring presence. The voice keeps circling between the person seen and the life already lived through war, travel, and disillusion. Great French books are dismissed not because they are worthless, but because a real presence has more authority than literature at that moment.
'Gold Sight': there she was, a double take; been to war and back and somehow still doing it. Beyond belief, crushed, crossing the world is not unusual except for her — not notice like great French books but a presence standing in front of you that would never go away.