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 sh.e.l.ls Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust-- Such heaps of broken gla.s.s 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 pa.s.sion 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 st.u.r.dy 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."

RANGE-FINDING

The battle rent a cobweb diamond-strung And cut a flower beside a ground bird's nest Before it stained a single human breast.

The stricken flower bent double and so hung.

And still the bird revisited her young.

A b.u.t.terfly its fall had dispossessed A moment sought in air his flower of rest, Then lightly stooped to it and fluttering clung.

On the bare upland pasture there had spread O'ernight 'twixt mullein stalks a wheel of thread And straining cables wet with silver dew.

A sudden pa.s.sing bullet shook it dry.

The indwelling spider ran to greet the fly, But finding nothing, sullenly withdrew.