When I see birches bend to left and right
\nAcross the lines of straighter darker trees,
\nI like to think some boy’s been swinging them.
\nBut swinging doesn’t bend them down to stay
\nAs ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
\nLoaded with ice a sunny winter morning
\nAfter a rain. They click upon themselves
\nAs the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
\nAs the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
\nSoon the sun’s warmth makes them shed crystal shells
\nShattering and avalanching on the snow-crust\u2014
\nSuch heaps of broken glass to sweep away
\nYou’d think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
\nThey are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
\nAnd they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
\nSo low for long, they never right themselves:
\nYou may see their trunks arching in the woods
\nYears afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
\nLike girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
\nBefore them over their heads to dry in the sun.
\nBut I was going to say when Truth broke in
\nWith all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
\nI should prefer to have some boy bend them
\nAs he went out and in to fetch the cows\u2014
\nSome boy too far from town to learn baseball,
\nWhose only play was what he found himself,
\nSummer or winter, and could play alone.
\nOne by one he subdued his father’s trees
\nBy riding them down over and over again
\nUntil he took the stiffness out of them,
\nAnd not one but hung limp, not one was left
\nFor him to conquer. He learned all there was
\nTo learn about not launching out too soon
\nAnd so not carrying the tree away
\nClear to the ground. He always kept his poise
\nTo the top branches, climbing carefully
\nWith the same pains you use to fill a cup
\nUp to the brim, and even above the brim.
\nThen he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
\nKicking his way down through the air to the ground.<\/p>\n
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
\nAnd so I dream of going back to be.
\nIt’s when I’m weary of considerations,
\nAnd life is too much like a pathless wood
\nWhere your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
\nBroken across it, and one eye is weeping
\nFrom a twig’s having lashed across it open.
\nI’d like to get away from earth awhile
\nAnd then come back to it and begin over.
\nMay no fate willfully misunderstand me
\nAnd half grant what I wish and snatch me away
\nNot to return. Earth’s the right place for love:
\nI don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
\nI’d like to go by climbing a birch tree,
\nAnd climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
\nToward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
\nBut dipped its top and set me down again.
\nThat would be good both going and coming back.
\nOne could do worse than be a swinger of birches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":310,"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions\/310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/scottbevill.net\/HVA\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}