Page 51

By Jack Joseph Smith

Right in the middle stumbling through the grass that is corn and the flowers that have wheat, shucked into two different ways to walk. Quiet; even if I didn't know Intent, the way you reach out Stretch your arm so far as to rob the place, you rested your fingers, after the she sheets in the sail, before and after the love of, and the beging to come back, and when it went to hell, didn't we show the rest, that you have got to turn around and not come back

Original Scan

Page 51

AI Interpretation

GPT

In "Right in the middle," a field of corn, flowers, wheat, theft, sailcloth, love, and return blurs into the hard instruction to turn around and not come back.

The poem keeps converting ordinary movement into moral pressure: stumbling becomes a way of walking, reaching becomes robbery, and return becomes something dangerous. The handwritten correction to wheat sharpens the field imagery while the crossed-out word leaves a visible break in the line about love. The ending reverses the collection's repeated pull toward return by making refusal the necessary act.


Claude

Right in the middle: corn as grass, wicks as flowers, reaching across to rob the place. Don't come back is the moral.