Second Reflection of the Week on Robert Frost's "Birches"

• Bracken (noun): 1. a large fern or brake, especially Pteridium aquilinum. 2. a cluster or thicket of such ferns; an area overgrown with ferns and shrubs.  

After reading Robert Frost's Birches over again a few times, I got the feeling that perhaps the narrator was either talking about taking risks and dealing with the consequences or dealing with depression. 

My first feeling that I had about taking risks and dealing with the consequences came to mind because the narrator goes in and out of negative and positive feelings when referring to bending the birch or "taking a risk". In the line, "...shed crystal shells; shattering and avalanching..." (10;11) I got the feeling that the narrator possibly took a risk but then also took a fall when the ice or "circumstance" shattered and avalanched into something unexpected.

The second feeling that I had was that the narrator was dealing with going in and out of depression. Throughout the poem the narrator goes in and out of negative feelings, talking about the sun shining in one line and then shattering ice in another. In the line, "...heaps of broken glass to sweep away," (12) it is almost as if the narrator is trying to get rid of his depression and negative memories and to sweep them away or get help to rid the thoughts from his mind.

This was an extremely long poem that jumped around a lot but all related back to the same thing, bending birches. It was hard to truly understand what Frost was writing about in his poem but it can be interpreted many different ways. Clearly, the narrator was a "swinger of birches" at one point in his life, 

"So once I was myself a swinger of birches. 

And so I dream of going back to be." (41-42)

and considers going back so that is where it makes me lean away from the idea of depression and lead more towards the idea of risk taking and dealing with the consequences.