They're taking down a tree at the front door,
The power saw is snarling at some nerves,
Whining at others.
Now and then it grunts,
And sawdust falls like snow or a drift of seeds.
Rotten, they tell us, at the fork, and
Big wind would bring it down.
So what they
They do, as usual, to do us good.
Whatever cannot carry its own weight Has got to go, and so on; you
To hear them talking next about
And the values of a free society.
For in the explanations people
On these occasions there is generally
Mean-spirited moral point, and
Privately wonders if his neighbors
To saw him up before he falls on them.
Maybe a hundred years in sun and
Dismantled in a morning and let
Out of itself a finger at a
And then an arm, and so down to the trunk,
Until there's nothing left to hold on
Or snub the splintery holding rope around,
And where those big green divagations
So loftily with shadows
The absent-minded blue rains in on us.
Now that they've got it sectioned on the
It looks as though somebody made a plain Error in diagnosis, for the
Looks sweet and sound throughout.
You couldn't know,
Of course, until you took it down.
That's
Experts are for, and these experts stand
The giant pieces of tree as though
An instruction booklet from the
Before they try to put it back together.
Anyhow, there it isn't, on the ground.
Next come the tractor and the crowbar
To extirpate what's left and fill the grave.
Maybe tomorrow grass seed will be sown.
There's some mean-spirited moral point in
As well: you learn to bury your mistakes,
Though for a while at dusk the darkening air Will be with many shadows interleaved,
And pierced with a bewilderment of birds.
Howard Nemerov was born on February 29th, 1920 in New York.
He died of cancer at his home in University City,
Missouri on July 5th 1991.
