Jacque Frost, the Cajun ice man, visited Lower Louisiana yesterday, Mardi Gras, March 4, 2014. I saw so much ice on bare tree and bush limbs I thought about Robert Frosts poem, Birches, which we studied in 11th grade English class. 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. I walked around in the yard and saw icicles hanging from the rose bushes and ice sticking to every green leaf on the La Reine Victoria rose. That ice covered rose bush already sports about a dozen rose buds in early March. The bare limbs of the crepe myrtle bush in my neighbors yard next door reminded me of walking in a winter wonderland as Little Miss Dynamite Brenda Lee sang in her Christmas carol. The other rose bushes, with tiny pale green leaves already sprouting, sagged under the weight of the ice and frost covering their leaves and long branches. The yellow and white daffodils yesterday drooped, heavy with frost. This morning those same daffodils had resurrected and arisen and stood at attention like Marine Corps recruits at Parris Island. The full text of Robert Frosts Birches When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boys been swinging them. But swinging doesnt 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 suns warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust— Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away Youd 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 fathers 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. Its when Im 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 twigs having lashed across it open. Id 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. Earths the right place for love: I dont know where its likely to go better. Id 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.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 19:57:59 +0000
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