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When I see
birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of
straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's
been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them
down to stay.
Ice-storms do that. Often you must have
seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the
breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir
cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth
makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and
avalanching on the snow-crust-
Such heaps of broken
glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of
heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered
bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break;
though once they are bowed
So low for long, they
never right themselves:
You may see their trunks
arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their
leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees
that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to
dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth
broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the
ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)
I should
prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and
in to fetch the cows-
Some boy too far from town to
learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found
himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding
them down over and over again
Until he took the
stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not
one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there
was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And
so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He
always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing
carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he
flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his
way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once
myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going
back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your
face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across
it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having
lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from
earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant
what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's
the right place for love:
I don't know where it's
likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a
birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white
trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no
more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One
could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
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