Les plus lus ▸
Carl Sandburg
The dancing girls here . . . after a long night of
it ...
The long beautiful night of the wind and rain in April,
The long night hanging down from the drooping
branches of the top of a birch tree,
Swinging, swaying, to the wind for a partner, to the
rain for a partner.
What is the humming, swishing thing they sing in
the morning now?
The rain, the wind, the swishing whispers of the long
slim curve so little and so dark on the western
morning sky . . . these dancing girls here on an
April early morning . . .
They have had a long cool beautiful night of it with
their partners learning this year's song of April.
White and black:
day buried night
in birch paper.
A Zen monk.
Any hat.
spicebush fills
the opening the big birch left
that allspice scent
“heteromorphic
self-incompatibility”
partridgeberry’s red pills
END OF PUBLIC ACCESS
sun shining right through
the plastic sign
where the road crosses the creek
a crayfish
walking upstream
paper birch trees can only bend
so far before they break
under the weight of freezing rain
rhododendron leaves
tough as old scrolls are stripped
by starving deer
but some always resprout from the roots
having who knows how many
lifetimes of practice
After all-night rain,
the forest floor is soft
and full of give.
A birch log collapses
when I step on it, but the bark
arches back after I pass.
New ferns uncoil,
heads slowly dissolving
into spine and ribs.
I walked down alone Sunday after church
To the place where John has been cutting trees
To see for myself about the birch
He said I could have to bush my peas.
The sun in the new-cut narrow gap
Was hot enough for the first of May,
And stifling hot with the odor of sap
From stumps still bleeding their life away.
The frogs that were peeping a thousand shrill
Wherever the ground was low and wet,
The minute they heard my step went still
To watch me and see what I came to get.
Birch boughs enough piled everywhere!--
All fresh and sound from the recent axe.
Time someone came with cart and pair
And got them off the wild flowers’ backs.
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
the last to go
in late autumn twilight
slender birch
Birch tree, you remind me
Of a room filled with breathing,
The sway and whisper of love.
She slips off her shoes;
Unzips her skirt; arms raised,
Unclasps an earring, and the other.
Just so the sallow trunk
Divides, and the branches
Are pale and smooth.
Not the wise, quiet pine nor the amorous, blonde oak
Nor the tall, pale, lady elm tree,
But you, who came invisible in a magic cloak,
You, who were the wind, chose me.
I, the white little birch, who had stood alone, serene,
Content to listen and to stare —
And I never saw your hands that tore my veils of green.
Nor your lips that laughed in my hair.
You held me and kissed me, I knew your strength and grace
And dreams rose like sap in the spring.
I trembled as with buds, but I never saw your face,
I only heard you whispering.
So yawning and careless you went on to field and sea,
So here I am lonely and still —
Oh wind, wind, better to have broken me
Than leave me with roots in the hill.
You set narcissus
Amidst your silver birches
By Northern lakeside.
I WOKE:—
Night, lingering, poured upon the world
Of drowsy hill and wood and lake
Her moon-song.
And the breeze accompanied with hushed fingers
On the birches.
Gently the dawn held out to me
A golden handful of bird's-notes.