When I see birches bend to left and right > Across the lines of straighter darker trees, jj I like to think someC^oy's)been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice-gtorms 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 forlong, they 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 wearyyof considerations, '2nd 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 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: j

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 he_a-_swinger- of birches.