I
\nToday they cut down the oak.
\nStrong men climbed with ropes
\nin the brittle tree.
\nThe exhaust of a gasoline saw
\nwas blue in the branches.<\/p>\n
It is February. The oak has been dead a year.
\nI remember the great sails of its branches
\nrolling out greenly, a hundred and twenty feet up,
\nand acorns thick on the lawn.
\nNine cities of squirrels lived in that tree.
\nToday they ran over the snow
\nsqueaking their lamentation.<\/p>\n
Yet I was happy that it was coming down.
\n\u201cLet it come down!\u201d I kept saying to myself
\nwith a joy that was strange to me.
\nThough the oak was the shade of old summers,
\nI loved the guttural saw.<\/p>\n
2
\nBy night a bare trunk stands up fifteen feet,
\nand cords of firewood press
\non the twiggy frozen grass of the yard.
\nA man comes every afternoon for a week
\nto cut the trunk gradually down.<\/p>\n
Bluish stains spread through the wood
\nand make it harder to cut.
\nHe says they are the nails of a trapper
\nwho dried his pelts on the oak
\nwhen badgers dug in my lawn.<\/p>\n
At the bottom he hacks for two days,
\nhis knuckles scraping the stiff snow.
\nHis chain saw breaks three teeth.
\nHe cannot make the trunk smooth. He leaves
\none night after dark.<\/p>\n
\t\t3
\nRoots stiffen under the ground
\nand the frozen street, coiled around pipes and wires.
\nThe stump is a platform of blond wood
\nin the gray winter. It is nearly level
\nwith the snow that covers the little garden around it.
\nIt is a door into the underground of old summers,
\nbut if I bend down to it, I am lost
\nin crags and buttes of a harsh landscape
\nthat goes on forever. When snow melts
\nthe wood darkens into the ground;
\nrain and thawed snow move deeply into the stump,
\nbackwards along the disused tunnels.<\/p>\n
\t\t4
\nThe edges of the trunk turn black.
\nIn the middle there is a pale overlay,
\nlike a wash of chalk on darkness.
\nThe desert of the winter
\nhas moved inside.
\nI do not step on it now, I am used to it,
\nlike a rock, or a bush that does not grow.<\/p>\n
There is a sailing ship
\nbeached in the cove of a small island
\nwhere the warm water is turquoise.
\nThe hulk leans over, full of rain and sand,
\nand shore flowers grow from it.
\nThen it is under full sail in the Atlantic,
\non a blue day, heading for the island.<\/p>\n
She has planted sweet alyssum
\nin the holes where the wood was rotten.
\nIt grows thick, it bulges
\nlike flowers contending from a tight vase.
\nnow the stump sinks downward into its roots
\nwith a cargo of rain
\nand white blossoms that last into October.<\/p>\n
-Donald Hall<\/em><\/p>\n\n I Today they cut down the oak. Strong men climbed with ropes in the brittle tree. The exhaust of a gasoline saw was blue in the branches. It is February. The oak has been dead a year. I remember the great sails of its branches rolling out greenly, a hundred and twenty feet up, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2341,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3999"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2341"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4000,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3999\/revisions\/4000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-mcnair\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}