“Birches” by Robert Frost is one of my favorite poems, and a perfect poem for this moment…
“Birches” is a beautiful midwinter poem, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot, especially this pandemic winter, when I’ve been longing for some escape.
In the poem, the speaker sees birch trees bent by a winter storm and imagines that they were bent, instead, by a boy swinging on them. Frost spends some time slowly describing the scene and his own imagination of the scene. His imagination takes him from midwinter and middle age to another season of life that is more full of energy and enthusiasm, and he imagines the boy–a younger version of himself— playing.
We may get weary of life and want to escape, may feel like life’s path is too difficult:
“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.”
We may wish to get away from it all. I know I sometimes do, and this pandemic winter, I sometimes feel that desire more strongly.
But my favorite part of the poem is when Frost clarifies what he means by getting away from earth for a while:
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 think “Birches” is also one of the most beautiful environmental poems: “Earth’s the right place for love./ I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.”
It’s not easy to be a human, and the earth and human experiences don’t always feel hospitable. But there is no place else for us to go. And all the love that has ever occurred in the universe has occurred right here on this imperfect, but beautiful, earth.
Here is the full poem. And I’ve included some writing prompts to work with below the poem:
Birches by Robert Frost
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 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
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.
Writing Prompts
I suggest, as always, that you try one of my guided meditation recordings before writing.
- If you could get away for a while, how would you go? Describe it in detail.
- Use the following six words in a piece of writing: birches, storm, snatch, flung, dome, dip
- Write a love poem/ love letter to the earth.
As always, please leave a comment below. If you use the prompts (or write from the poem without the prompts) share your writing :)! And share this with any friends who might be interested!
Grab Your Meditation Recordings
The meditation on the first recording is a silent breath meditation.
The second recording is a guided meditation that connects you with your body and opens you to your own creative flow.
There is such intense heterosexual awakening and domination imagery in this poem that I read it as a beautiful (human) nature poem… Snatch and twigs and on and on – wrote a paper on it in college.
I see an account of the naiive, masculine fantasy of domination of the feminine landscape. Frost is so masterful at blurring,blending, comparing human nature and landscape nature .
haha–Yes! I see that now that you point it out , too 🙂 But I don’t know that the landscape in this poem feels particularly feminine with all those tall trees… 🙂
I loved ALL the information and inspiration!! My problem and I know I have to solve it myself – is what one to do now. I have so much poetry AND prose running around in my head I have a hard time deciding which one to do!!!!!
That’s a great problem to have 🙂 My strategy is to start at the top and work my way down if I don’t have a good reason for working in another way. So start with my first prompt and then go to my second. OR if you have a lot of ideas in your head, grab a piece of paper and write them down in the order they come to you. Then start at the top 🙂 Enjoy 🙂
I was inspired!!
If only you knew that the briar branches announced their love last Spring.
That their ruby rivulets carved into my ankles and wrists
Are marks of rite of passage, of holy ritual,
Are members of a secluded audience witnessing my rebirth.
Beautiful! Thank you for sharing!
Ice storm today. With the writing prompts, and The poem The Birches, a poem came bubbling up in no time at all. Blessings
I’m so glad this got you writing, Dusty! A perfect day for it 🙂
Love this post! So inspiring. And the prompts, too 🙂
<3
I have not read it since high school when I vaguely recall an over-analysis where the birches were presented as symbolic–
I see it now as simple and straightforward. The birches are just birches and more than anything about a man’s intense love of natural things and being in nature.
Haha. English classes can sometimes over-analyze and kill the love of reading. <3
Thank you for your comment!
Thank you!
Loved the prompt about getting away. So needed these days.
What I like about Frost’s poetry is that it is accessible to nearly all, that we can look at the possibility of symbol or metaphor in a poem like “Birches,” or we can bring to it our own associations. Like Frost, our real attraction to Nature and this specific imagery might simply be to become a kid again in our memory, experiencing it from the author’s skill with words. Looking back can carry us through our current difficulties in adulthood when we have come to understand that living is not so simple or magical. Still, we can have it tucked safely in our memory. To find more in a poem is what re-reading is all about.
Yes, so well put, Carol. We can read the poem on many different levels–kind of like reading life itself 🙂