Swinging Birches.

I've had just enough time to...   wish I'm again swinging birches.

Caught the monkey swinging in the Taiping park and wished I was the one swinging.

I stopped to watch the monkey swinging on the branch.

It seemed so much fun that I wish I was the one swinging 

And the monkey was me.

_______

"Birches" (1916) - Robert Frost

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. 

Something There Is That Doesn't Love A Wall.

I've had just enough time to...  tear down a fence.

Taken in Maxwell Hill, Taiping.

Mending Wall
By Robert Frost

He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down!"

_______

Sometimes I don't understand

Why a fence is in place where there is no need for one.

Strangely, you'll find there is no short of those who will come to its defence

Yet cannot explain why there is a need for it.

Who build the fences?

Why did they do it?

When I cannot find the reason,

I've a strong tendency to want to tear it down.

The Old Man of the Mountain.

I've had just enough time to...   speak to the Old Man of the Mountain.

Taken in Gunung Lang, Ipoh.

The Old Man

by Robert F Doane
Published 1939 at 13 years of age
Campton New Hampshire 
On the crest of a mighty mountain
Looking over the lake below,
A face with a human expression
Watches many a century go.

It was made from a mountain of granite
With the skill of a sculptor's hand,
And guards the green valley below it
As time passes over the land.

At dusk when the birds cease their carols
And the wind murmurs through the trees,
There's a sense of sadness about you,
As you stand in the evening breeze.

You feel that a great respect's due him -
So mighty beneath the blue sky,
There are few who have not been inspired
By that face as they've passed it by.

And to me, as to Daniel Webster,
The thought comes now and again
That in the great State of New Hampshire
The Master of Sculptors makes men.

_______

Do not grieve that the Old Man of New Hampshire is no more,

He just left the granite shoulder of Profile Mountain,

To rest on the limestone shoulder of Gunung Lang.

(The Old man of New Hamsphire fell on May 2003, I found my Old man of Gunung Lang in Sept 2011)