Poetry Friday - Robert Frost

Trees seem to be on my mind this week. My favorite trees are the willow and the dogwood, neither of which can I keep alive! In fact I have discovered that my treasured elderly dogwood is dying. Poet Robert Frost wrote about many things in nature including trees.

Some lines from Frost’s

“Birches”

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.
. . .
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.
. . .
I’d like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
. . .
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.

Frost said about poetry: “Poetry provides the one permissible way of saying one thing and meaning another.”

In my book . . . A swing in or on or around a tree is a fine thing. Swing away!

Quote and Poem from:
The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry
Edited by Richard Ellmann and Robert O’Clair