The central aspect of Robert Frost's poem, “Birches,” focuses strangely enough, on the birch trees themselves. Every metaphor or statement the speaker makes is centered on the trees, whether specific ones in front of him or the more abstract idea of birch trees in general. One interesting such statement occurs in the opening lines, where the speaker describes seeing “birches bend to left and right” (1561). He “like[s] to think some boy’s been swinging them/But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay/As ice storms do” (1561). From the very beginning, we have a statement of both lost childhood and the disconnect between one’s dreams and one reality. The sight of the bent trees pleasantly reminds the speaker of the joy and exuberance of youth, of the days when he was free to spend his days “swinging” birches and enjoying life. Yet at the same time, he is all too aware of how reality tends to win out over imagination. He knows that, most likely, the bent trunks and branches came about as a result of an “ice storm”, rather than any rambunctious youth. The world has taken something he holds dear, something he associates with youth and childhood, and turned it into, quite literally, a cold product of nature. This is why the speaker goes on to state, many lines down, that he “should prefer to have some boy bend them” (1561). What is curious however, is that although he is quite aware that it was an ice storm that bent the trees, the speaker nevertheless goes on to create an entire narrative of the imaginary boy who bent them. He states “I was going to say when Truth broke in/With all her matter of fact about the ice storm” (1561) before telling the backstory of some young boy who bent the birches “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” (1562). This story goes on for many more lines, where we learn of how the boy would