#Birches

[thunderstruck9]

Otto Altenkirch (German, 1875-1945), Birkenecke, 1920. Oil on canvas, 120 x 95 cm.

[lindagoesmushrooming]

[tofreezetime]

running through the forest with my heart wide open

[rabbitinthemeadow]

Oh dreadful, fallow heart // Part 6

January 28th, 2023

[myfairynuffstuff]

Yuanyuan Liu (b.1974) - Autumn Birches. 2021. Oil on canvas.

[kit-all]

[highways-are-liminal-spaces]

Sunrise over the trees around Sax-Zim Bog, Minnesota

Taken February 2024

[inspirehorizon]

Through silent woods the ice now stays, a crystal path of winter's ways

[fatchance]

"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."

A fragment from the poem "Birches" by Robert Frost. It was first published in the August 1915 edition of The Atlantic Monthly, along with the famous poem, "The Road Not Taken."

[apoemaday]

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.

[abellinthecupboard]

Paper Birch

You come to nature and see yourself. In likenesses, say: bones and books and dresses, cream-sheath, pearl-shine sheeted so-and-so of the woods. Can you see us without the pen in your hand? The way we love a long winter, our trunks swathed white as defense against too much light. The way something can still burn in the coldest season. Yes. We. How narrow our shoots how pure the stand, rarely alone we raise from summer ash in call and response. A clarity of birches. An overland. Lifted (like a veil?) as quickly as your childhood.

— Jennifer K. Sweeney, featured in Rust & Moth, Autumn 2024 Issue (source)

[thunderstruck9]

Léon De Smet (Belgian, 1881-1966), Edge of the Forest, 1955. Oil on canvas, 80 x 65 cm.

[huariqueje]

Samba Birches  -  Paul Burgess, 2022.

Welsh,b. 1960s  -

Oil on canvas , 70  100 cm.

[tofreezetime]

land of birches

[rabbitinthemeadow]

Oh dreadful, fallow heart // Part 14

January 28th, 2023

[stompin]