Severance

Severance

The act or process of severing
Or the state of being severed.
As when a cancerous growth
Needs removing surgically,
Or as when some pleasure
Has stiffened into addiction.
For instance, when you see
Piles of brush spaced out 
Under an orchard, those are 
Branches that once reached 
For the sun and held the rain 
A moment before letting it drop.
But they were taking strength
Away from the fruit, 
So someone, paid hardly
Anything surely, angled a saw in, 
Severing them from all that
They’ve ever known, the tree itself, 
Which they always thought
Themselves an integral part of,
Not extraneous to it,
But the thing the whole thing
Is for, and this is why
Where they were cut you’ll find
A mark of astonishment —
The shape an open mouth makes.