Learning By Doing Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCDEFGHIJKLMENO PQRSFTPUVT WGXYTZKP TFA2B2C2D2E2UF2| They're taking down a tree at the front door | A |
| The power saw is snarling at some nerves | B |
| Whining at others Now and then it grunts | C |
| And sawdust falls like snow or a drift of seeds | D |
| Rotten they tell us at the fork and one | E |
| Big wind would bring it down So what they do | F |
| They do as usual to do us good | G |
| Whatever cannot carry its own weight | H |
| Has got to go and so on you expect | I |
| To hear them talking next about survival | J |
| And the values of a free society | K |
| For in the explanations people give | L |
| On these occasions there is generally some | M |
| Mean spirited moral point and everyone | E |
| Privately wonders if his neighbors plan | N |
| To saw him up before he falls on them | O |
| - | |
| Maybe a hundred years in sun and shower | P |
| Dismantled in a morning and let down | Q |
| Out of itself a finger at a time | R |
| And then an arm and so down to the trunk | S |
| Until there's nothing left to hold on to | F |
| Or snub the splintery holding rope around | T |
| And where those big green divagations were | P |
| So loftily with shadows interleaved | U |
| The absent minded blue rains in on us | V |
| Now that they've got it sectioned on the ground | T |
| - | |
| It looks as though somebody made a plain | W |
| Error in diagnosis for the wood | G |
| Looks sweet and sound throughout You couldn't know | X |
| Of course until you took it down That's what | Y |
| Experts are for and these experts stand round | T |
| The giant pieces of tree as though expecting | Z |
| An instruction booklet from the factory | K |
| Before they try to put it back together | P |
| - | |
| Anyhow there it isn't on the ground | T |
| Next come the tractor and the crowbar crew | F |
| To extirpate what's left and fill the grave | A2 |
| Maybe tomorrow grass seed will be sown | B2 |
| There's some mean spirited moral point in that | C2 |
| As well you learn to bury your mistakes | D2 |
| Though for a while at dusk the darkening air | E2 |
| Will be with many shadows interleaved | U |
| And pierced with a bewilderment of birds | F2 |
Howard Nemerov
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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