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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.
  But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay.
  Ice-storms 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 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
  (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 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.

PEA BRUSH

  I walked down alone Sunday after church
    To the place where John has been cutting trees
  To see for myself about the birch
    He said I could have to bush my peas.

  The sun in the new-cut narrow gap
    Was hot enough for the first of May,
  And stifling hot with the odor of sap
    From stumps still bleeding their life away.

  The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill
    Wherever the ground was low and wet,
  The minute they heard my step went still
    To watch me and see what I came to get.

  Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!--
    All fresh and sound from the recent axe.
  Time someone came with cart and pair
    And got them off the wild flower's backs.

  They might be good for garden things
    To curl a little finger round,
  The same as you seize cat's-cradle strings,
    And lift themselves up off the ground.

  Small good to anything growing wild,
    They were crooking many a trillium
  That had budded before the boughs were piled
    And since it was coming up had to come.

PUTTING IN THE SEED

  You come to fetch me from my work to-night
  When supper's on the table, and we'll see
  If I can leave off burying the white
  Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.
  (Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
  Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
  And go along with you ere you lose sight
  Of what you came for and become like me,
  Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
  How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
  On through the watching for that early birth
  When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,

  The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
  Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

A TIME TO TALK

  When a friend calls to me from the road
  And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
  I don't stand still and look around
  On all the hills I haven't hoed,
  And shout from where I am, What is it?
  No, not as there is a time to talk.
  I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
  Blade-end up and five feet tall,
  And plod: I go up to the stone wall
  For a friendly visit.

THE COW IN APPLE TIME

  Something inspires the only cow of late
  To make no more of a wall than an open gate,
  And think no more of wall-builders than fools.
  Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools
  A cider syrup. Having tasted fruit,
  She scorns a pasture withering to the root.
  She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten
  The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.
  She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.
  She bellows on a knoll against the sky.
  Her udder shrivels and the milk goes dry.

AN ENCOUNTER

  Once on the kind of day called "weather breeder,"
  When the heat slowly hazes and the sun
  By its own power seems to be undone,
  I was half boring through, half climbing through
  A swamp of cedar. Choked with oil of cedar
  And scurf of plants, and weary and over-heated,
  And sorry I ever left the road I knew,
  I paused and rested on a sort of hook
  That had me by the coat as good as seated,
  And since there was no other way to look,
  Looked up toward heaven, and there against the blue,
  Stood over me a resurrected tree,
  A tree that had been down and raised again--
  A barkless spectre. He had halted too,
  As if for fear of treading upon me.
  I saw the strange position of his hands--
  Up at his shoulders, dragging yellow strands
  Of wire with something in it from men to men.
  "You here?" I said. "Where aren't you nowadays
  And what's the news you carry--if you know?
  And tell me where you're off for--Montreal?
  Me? I'm not off for anywhere at all.
  Sometimes I wander out of beaten ways
  Half looking for the orchid Calypso."