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By Jack Joseph Smith

who loved the family and protected it's laws, when the men and children were away from home. She knew that the law of the family, the church, and the factory made everybody happy. Her mothers belief was that her mother and father baried in the downtown graveyard in Doublin had made her laws. My mothers grandparents in the downtown graveyard in Doublin laughed in their bones, and finally made love in the dirt. And insanely cracked their knuckles at midnight tea, for the glad troublemakers of the mischief fearless world, who like they, knew who made the laws. My mother would have known this too, if when she was a child she would have had a piano to play and play, until she ran out of other peoples songs. Weave your spirit too, family, church, and state, who's the one with the bait. Ghosts of youth in white shirts Me watching my mother cross the driveway, while my father and I stood still. We softly giggleing about a stolen Saturday. And she walking, with her left hand lightly touching Iris flowers druping over the rough stone wall. Lilly's in a church pew praying under lovely young roses. Spiritually her eyes favored then flew, with her mind touching the tips of the Dog Wood trees. Their umbrella branches held above them four yellow peddled spring bloomed flowers, with Christ on his back in the garden faceing the night, that they gave our yard anouther beginning or anouther end. The breeze touched the trees and her hair moved with the branches. And my father and I followed her talking of this and that, while my fingers reached for the feeling of the leaves. How many Dog Wood trees are here MICHAEL? What's this kind? It's a Dog Wood.

Original Scan

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AI Interpretation

GPT

A mother is imagined as the keeper of family law and inherited belief, then seen moving through irises and dogwoods while father and child follow her into a spring-lit yard.

Domestic order, church order, old-country family memory, and the handwritten ghosts of youth are braided together, so love and law feel like the same inheritance. The turn into the yard grounds those abstractions in motion and naming, especially in the small exchange over the dogwood tree.

Claude

The narrator describes his mother as keeper of the laws of family, church, and factory, inherited from her parents buried in the downtown graveyard in 'Doublin', where the grandparents 'laughed in their bones' and 'cracked their knuckles at midnight tea'; a margin note adds 'Ghosts of youth in white shirts'. He then watches her cross the driveway touching Iris flowers under the Dog Wood trees while he and his father follow, ending in a small exchange naming the Dog Wood for MICHAEL.

The page sets inherited order against a mischievous, sensual counter-tradition of the dead, asking of 'family, church, and state, who's the one with the bait.' The spring yard, with Christ 'on his back in the garden faceing the night', turns those abstractions into a tender procession in which the mother seems half spiritual. The closing question and answer about the tree ground the mood in a child's plain learning of names.