Another side-by-side, today, the great Robert Frost’s “Birches” and a poem I wrote about listening to a recording of Robert Frost’s “Birches” back in summer 2023.
“Listening to Robert Frost’s “Birches” on a Walk”
Listening to Robert Frost’s “Birches” on a walk
in the woods of my adolescence – not figuratively –
walking the actual geography of it, floating more like
hearing Frost’s voice warble in wireless headphones
that would have astonished him with the force
of 1,000 phonograph recordings (later uploaded
to YouTube) as if it were a sudden third option
at that fork in the road. The one less traveled, the
one more traveled, and the one skipping from
a more innocent dawn to this realm of Podcasts
and AirPods. There’s a joke with many variations,
the cleanest I can think of is this:
“Twitter would
have blown e.e. cummings’ mind,” or similar.
The joke is the world changes so dramatically.
A bird chirps just outside my ear, many
birds do about their springtime aubades, warbling
along as Frost lazily recites: I’d like to get away
from Earth for awhile. I can relate. The violence
of ice-fallen trees is hard enough to handle, now
the banks of Yellow Creek climb far higher
than they once did, when a scamp who had
a face in the shape of my face played upon them
muddy but grinning, a boy whose only play
was what he found himself, Summer or winter,
and cloud play alone. I scan the bench where
alone, I wrote poems of my own in high school, unsure
of what any of the classics meant and now, sure
they are all poems about raising my own son.
I see where I, alone, smoked cigarettes in the rain, thinking,
harder than I am willing to admit, about
“Stopping By The Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
The woods were too lush then, were too lush
then, too lush then, too lush, then, to imagine
yet another road, one so awfully traveled,
agnostic to the miles left to go before sleep.
Sometimes the birches are me: you may see my
trunk arching in the woods / years afterwards.
A shadow of myself speeds by on a bicycle,
the paw print of that boy’s dog evaporates,
the sound of her lapping tongue sings out of
the creek, again – just outside my ears – enveloped
with Frost, reciting “Birches.” The iPhone would,
surely, amaze him. He could have hailed a rideshare
and never heard those sweet bells. I shouldn’t pick
on the old poet, he, by far my better, and me
equally amazed I am on a walk in these woods
weary of considerations, back “home” at a supper table
blending my new family, our young son, with my old
family, I, their young son. Earth’s the right place
for love: I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
I’m glad to have walked, and walked, and walk.
When the small boy in the shape of me can walk
on his own, I believe I will show him my favorite tree,
we will marvel at its still standing, I will marvel
with relief, that I am still standing.
