Blackbird Archive
← v21n3, Spring 2023
Poetry · Volume 21, Number 3

The Felling

Steve Scafidi

Clearing land for his father

and ordered to cut down

the horse chestnut tree

in full bloom with blossoms

like cream-colored torches

or candle lamps set at

the edges of the branches,

he pauses a moment

with the teeth of the saw

embedded enough to keep

the tool in place and thinks

of all that is just beginning

ending and cries through

the cutting as the saw

starts the zing and yaw

and the zing and yaw of

work that sings and calls

sings and calls until the tree

like a man just shot will stop

to look around as he falls

amazed leaning in the pause.

worknaturechildhood
Steve Scafidi

Steve Scafidi is the author of Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), For Love of Common Words (Louisiana State University, 2006), The Cabinetmaker’s Window (Louisiana State University, 2014), To the Bramble and the Briar (University of Arkansas Press, 2014) and a chapbook, Songs for the Carry-On (Q Avenue Press, 2013). He has won the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the James Boatwright Prize, and the Miller Williams Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and he has taught at several universities including, most recently, in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.