Felled — Summary

Dave BontaContemplative

love is fallen upon me like cutting down a tree to make better light

with my whole body I appease my desire to be nobody

but I see how fanatic tenants would garden on so little ground being almost starved

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Love arrives in this poem as something closer to destruction than comfort. The speaker compares it to cutting down a tree so more light can get in: there's a gain, but only because something big and living has been lost. Love "falls upon" the speaker the way a tree might fall, suddenly and with weight.

In the second stanza the speaker gives everything to the feeling, "with my whole body," and wants to disappear into it, to be "nobody." That wish reads as both surrender and relief, as if losing the self were the point.

The last lines turn to an odd image of "fanatic tenants" growing gardens on tiny plots of land while nearly starving. Judging by the imagery, the speaker sees their own devotion in these people: stubborn, a little desperate, making something grow from almost nothing. The mood is quiet, intense, and slightly shaken, a mix of light, loss, and hunger.

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