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RYDER

They're taking down a tree at the front door, 
The power saw is snarling at some nerves, 
Whining at others. Now and then it grunts, 
And sawdust falls like snow or a drift of seeds. 
Rotten, they tell us, at the fork, and one 
Big wind would bring it down. So what they do 
They do, as usual, to do us good. 
Whatever cannot carry its own weight 
Has got to go, and so on; you expect 
To hear them talking next about survival 
And the values of a free society. 
For in the explanations people give 
On these occasions there is generally some 
Mean-spirited moral point, and everyone 
Privately wonders if his neighbors plan 
To saw him up before he falls on them. 

Maybe a hundred years in sun and shower 
Dismantled in a morning and let down 
Out of itself a finger at a time 
And then an arm, and so down to the trunk, 
Until there's nothing left to hold on to 
Or snub the splintery holding rope around, 
And where those big green divagations were 
So loftily with shadows interleaved 
The absent-minded blue rains in on us. 
Now that they've got it sectioned on the ground 

It looks as though somebody made a plain 
Error in diagnosis, for the wood 
Looks sweet and sound throughout. You couldn't know, 
Of course, until you took it down. That's what 
Experts are for, and these experts stand round 
The giant pieces of tree as though expecting 
An instruction booklet from the factory 
Before they try to put it back together. 

Anyhow, there it isn't, on the ground. 
Next come the tractor and the crowbar crew 
To extirpate what's left and fill the grave. 
Maybe tomorrow grass seed will be sown. 
There's some mean-spirited moral point in that 
As well: you learn to bury your mistakes, 
Though for a while at dusk the darkening air 
Will be with many shadows interleaved, 
And pierced with a bewilderment of birds

~Learning by doing, By Howard Nemerov~

I learned English first. That was the first language I learnt. The doctor gave me a name. Ryder. He wasn't calling me Zephyr 30-03-22 anymore. He said it was too much of a mouthful to pronounce. It was strange. I thought my name was Zephyr 30-03-22,yet he changed it to Ryder. It was my name... Why was I not given a choice in the change?

As I continued to live there, I found myself wondering who I was. The doctor told me I was an innovation. He told me I was the future. I didn't know what he meant, so I searched  up what future meant. Future, by definition, means something that is yet to come, but if I was the future, why was I here? In the present? Was I made too early? Was it not my time yet?

The doctor would laugh at me whenever I asked him these questions. I could never understand why. I just wanted to learn more. He led me to the library one night, where I found approximately 49,682 books, strangely all used a strange fibre known as paper. It was rough to the touch, yet there was something oddly satisfying about turning a page and reading the next content, something special about finishing a book and continuing to the next.

As I did, my vocabulary increased, I learned quickly, about different cultures. According to the doctor,I was exceeding faster than he'd imagined. Doctor Roland was a strange man. At least to me he was. Maybe to others, he was normal. His light brown hair was strange, yet it complimented his aqautic blue eye's well. I never saw him in anything else other than his lab attire. After I learned to walk, he showed me to his room, and allowed me to sleep in a spare bedroom. It had a bed inside, and that was all. Nothing else but a single bed. The doctor was a strange man. He had a box filled with magazines beneath his bed, and they were filled with women brandishing their genitalia.