Jacqueline Woodson - Birch tree poem lyrics

Before my teacher reads the poem, she has to explain. A birch, she says, is a kind of tree then magically she pulls a picture from her desk drawer and the tree is suddenly real to us. “When I see birches bend to left and right . . .” she begins “Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think”— and when she reads, her voice drops down so low and beautiful some of us put our heads on our desks to keep the happy tears from flowing —“some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay As ice-storms do.” And even though we've never seen an ice storm we've seen a birch tree, so we can imagine everything we need to imagine forever and ever infinity amen.