Birches When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the line of straighter dark 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 were dragged down by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low there’s no returning them to their form
They want to go back to bend of the bough
That’s what the boy in the birch trees wants to think.

But I can’t rightly say I like the shape
And make of this, but I do like to see
The trees are bent and broken by the ice;
They suggest a boy’s back bending by the trees
Instead of trees over a boy who’s gone.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain,
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

• Robert Frost