Learning by Doing

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 one

Big wind would bring it down. So what they do

They do, as usual, to do us good.

Whatever cannot carry its own weight

Has got to go, and so on; you expect

To hear them talking next about survival

And the values of a free society.

For in the explanations people give

On these occasions there is generally some

Mean-spirited moral point, and everyone

Privately wonders if his neighbors plan

To saw him up before he falls on them.

Maybe a hundred years in sun and shower

Dismantled in a morning and let down

Out of itself a finger at a time

And then an arm, and so down to the trunk,

Until there's nothing left to hold on to

Or snub the splintery holding rope around,

And where those big green divagations were

So loftily with shadows interleaved

The absent-minded blue rains in on us.

Now that they've got it sectioned on the ground

It looks as though somebody made a plain

Error in diagnosis, for the wood

Looks sweet and sound throughout. You couldn't know,

Of course, until you took it down. That's what

Experts are for, and these experts stand round

The giant pieces of tree as though expecting

An instruction booklet from the factory

Before they try to put it back together.

Anyhow, there it isn't, on the ground.

Next come the tractor and the crowbar crew

To extirpate what's left and fill the grave.

Maybe tomorrow grass seed will be sown.

There's some mean-spirited moral point in that

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.