Mercy, Tear It Down

By: Michael Mcgriff

We were contracted with the prison crew

        to take the ridge. Tear it down.

Trees, scotchbroom, fence posts.

        It was too hot to smoke cigarettes.

My chainsaw touched a whole world

        of yellowjackets in a beetle-rotten stump

and my skin went tight. I lay face down

        in the duff after the crew boss shot me

full of something he kept in his saw bag.

        An inmate carried half a hunting dog

like an armful of cedar bolts

        from the last stand of brush.

What was left was swollen with ants.

        The vise in my throat bore down,

daylight broke its bones across the ridge.

        Tear it down.  From there you could see

the whole town.  Tear it down, tear it down.

Mercy, Tear it Down, is by far one of my favorite pieces of poetry. Composed by Michael Mcgriff, an Oregon poet, he captures an image of workers working on cutting down trees, in where I presume to be the Oregon forests. However, the speaker is met by a confrontation. In fact, multiple. Other than the heat of the sun, and the tiresome of the work itself, he is attacked by a yellowjacket nest. I think this is all symbolic. Because Mcgriff has a background of being a naturalist, I think he is trying to convey the depletion of our forests, and the hardships the people doing the work face. This is why I like this poem so much. Because it seems to hit both sides of the spectrum. To me the poem ends with the author dying, being put out of his misery by the boss. While watching the days work continue on. Like a tree that has been cut down with no consideration of the life that it once held. Maybe that's what he is trying to convey, that the lumberjack that dies is just like the trees he cuts down. Also, in poetry I love hidden messages. I think the word “down” in this poem is symbolic to the meaning. Due to the fact that the trees are coming down, and so is the man's life.