By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
The speaker begins searching after something comes apart, leaves, and considers solidity beside change without claiming a completed discovery.
The speaker starts with a failure to place something and recounts a search after its disintegration. The Sun supplies a comparison for solidity, followed by Things change though and the warning that change is not necessarily good fortune. The page ends with the unfinished Try to, leaving the next action open.
In 'Place' the speaker says 'I didn't place it / Instead, I looked for it', and only went to find it after 'whatever it was, / came apart'. Though it was 'Desired as much as dreams are not', the speaker 'still left', knowing 'there was nothing / more solid than the Sun'; things change, 'not necessarly / good fortune', and the page ends on 'A gut as a vision then a form / Try to'.
The poem plays on 'place' as both locating and setting something down, and follows a search that begins only after loss. Short, lightly punctuated lines give it a hesitant, thinking-aloud tone, set against the fixed image of the Sun. It breaks off mid-phrase at the bottom of the sheet, so the attempt is left open.