Green Man Tree Oracle: Birch

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.

I love Robert Frost, and this was a favourite poem of mine to teach, back in my days as a high school English teacher. It turns out that Robert Frost's view of birches is not unlike John Matthews' in Green Man Tree Oracle, nor mine, for that matter. 

The Birch, according to Matthews, symbolizes new beginnings. It is also associated with youth, being called the Lady of the Woods, and thus reminiscent of the Maiden aspect of Goddess. The birch is ruled by Venus and thus connected with love and beauty. 

Because of its silvery bark and lacy, delicate shape, the birch was one of the first trees I learned to recognize when I was a child. I have always liked the delicate, slender shape of birches. Because they are so bendy, slender and fragile looking, they remind me of youth, and yes I suppose new beginnings as well. 

I love Robert Frost's references to his own memories of swinging in the pliant birch trees, how the activity reminds him of a more innocent time, when life was less confusing and painful, and how he longs to go back there. But since he can't, he'd like to imagine that instead he could climb up a birch to take a break from the cares of life, and have it gently bend and set him back down on earth, refreshed and renewed. So lovely. 

There are many interpretations I would consider if the Birch came up in a reading. One is resiliency. The Birch can withstand so much bending, as referenced in the Frost poem. It bends itself to forces instead of resisting and breaking. (It can even withstand some callow New England farm boy riding it down, thinking he's somehow conquering it. Pish.) It just keeps growing, in a new shape. It looks fragile but it is adaptable. Its white colour suggests a purity or innocence. The lacy pattern of its leaves suggests openness, receptivity, honesty. There could be a touch of nostalgia there as well!