Birches.

I was driving and I had to stop my car when I saw bent birches, which immediately reminded me of one of my favorite poems and I'm not even a Robert Frost fan. I reread it and it made me cry and thus I post.

"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.

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 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

(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 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.

What if....

Today's "Will's What If" statement: What if the whole world was flooded with ketchup??? His favorite condiment by far is ketchup, including on his pasta... for breakfast. These are the things that make me giggle. :)

I Have Fear

I really hope that no one reads this and that this can be just my journal with a pretty background and all typed out nice and neat than what my journals actually look like: scribbled thoughts and prayers, sometimes poems. From the times I'm without a journal and just need to write there are the pages of loose leaf paper folded into fourths and sticking out randomly. I hardly ever read them again, maybe once every two years. Every time I finish a journal I always read the first entry and the last to see any growth but I typically don't scour through them.

It's as if I'm afraid that if I read the struggles I have been through, a part of them will be reborn. If you think about it, the small majority of us who have journaled for a significant part of our lives can see how our souls grow, how each lesson changes us. I started writing after my Mom was hospitalized for the first time around the age of 12. Each individual event in my life has changed me. They made me believe, they made me doubt, they made angry, they made me awestruck.

As I get closer to my birthday (24) I can't help but think that I have been keeping a record of my life for about half of my life and that the one trait that is always constant is fear. I wish I could change, especially as it has become more prevalent in the last two years in my life is fear.

I have always been afraid of committing to something and often times someone, if I don't see the escape. I was afraid of committing to college, relationships, volunteer work, work. The past two years have been full of fear of disappointing someone or hurting someone. It's hard for me to let go of control, it's something I pray for all the time. "Lord let me surrender."

Now I have no control. My Dad... It's funny how tragedy makes people react in certain ways. I know people in the face of tragedy and hardship who swear off God all together. I can get angry at how they can give up while I watch my Dad pray everyday, morning prayer, evening prayer, and night prayer, and in the middle of his own suffering he is joyful and tells me, "Han, I pray for grace of perseverance." Dad, make it a double, one for you one for me.