Birch Trees (A photo, a poem, and a comment)

Birches in New Hampshire (photo by me)

Birches

WHEN I see birches bend to left and right
Across the line 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 wilfully 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.

Robert Frost


I tried telling a friend about this poem, and he said "Robert Frost? Yawn..."

There was something about seeing these trees, after never having seen birches (or at least never noticing them), that really got my attention. The towering straight trunks and white bark caught my attention.

My friend, Mark, told me that they grow very slowly, and the American Indians would cultivate them for future generations to use for bows and canoes and who knows what else. Conservation. I thought I was doing well by putting my newspapers in a recycle bin...

The reason that this poem stuck out in my mind (like in many Robert Frost poems) is the last line:

One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

When I read that line 8 years ago I went out and bought the complete poems of Robert Frost and I used to read them to Ryan when he was a baby...he wouldn't sit still for them now, I guess, because they are subtle.

I could write a whole entry on "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". I have secrets about that poem...

To me, that line means a few things, like mourning the passing of youth, but, more importantly, a reminder of how to live your life today. Enjoying the moment, and having fun with what is around you (you might as well, you're stuck with it!)

Sometimes I paraphrase it to myself, incorporating whatever situation I find myself in...

One could do worse than to come home to my family every day
One could do worse than to have a nice lunch with a good friend
One could do worse than to go fishing on a calm Saturday morning with my son
One could do worse than to work long hours by the ocean for a week

It meant a little more to sit under the birches and think to myself--this is a pretty good life...