"Birches" , by Robert Frost, is a symbolic poem about choices, the choices of heaven's truth, and earth's truth. The choices exists because when Frost had first experienced earth's truth he did not like what the senses convey, or can find no meaning in it, then the aspiration toward some kind of heaven became more important, and that heaven's truth becomes a choice. The need to choose is apparent, as Radcliffe Squires points out from his book The Major Themes Of Robert Frost, because these truths are his understanding of the universe. If he does not pick the way he perceives his life, then his conscienceness shall go insane. Through his experience, Frost finally takes both paths of truths by becoming a swinger of birches.

             Through out the entire poem, we can see that Frost purposely divides the entire poem into three parts or stanzas. He wants us to experience possibly his own experience of swinging of birches by first introducing us to the start of the journey down on earth in the first stanza. He then releases us on the birch tree into the air where we could almost reach the heavens above in the second stanza. Finally as the birch tree can no longer go any higher, it brings us back down to earth so that we may be perceive a different earth in the third stanza. It can be seen that reality and the understanding of reality also follow this same trip on the birches. The reality that everyone faces everyday is introduced in the first stanza and reality is broken in with a rampage of imagination in the second stanza. Finally a newer and more enlightened reality can be seen by the end of the trip down on earth.

             The word "truth" has to be defined to understand what Frost is really saying about the choices he has to make. Webster's New World Dictionary defines truth as "being true" but in one of the more specific meaning that defines truth is "reality." This is the earth's truth that Frost describes in the beginning of "Birches.