The Carpathians - University of British Columbia
The Carpathians - University of British Columbia
The Carpathians - University of British Columbia
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George<br />
W o o d c o c k<br />
<strong>The</strong> Cherry Tree on Cherry Street<br />
I saw you first as a cloud<br />
fettered to a tree<br />
whose huge gnarled branches draped<br />
a long-lived wooden house.<br />
We saw the house and tree,<br />
its grey against your white.<br />
We bought the house and you<br />
continued to inhabit<br />
your root-filled habitat.<br />
<strong>The</strong> rooms were servant small,<br />
the ceilings falling, the<br />
paper draping <strong>of</strong>f walls,<br />
the basement an anthropologist's<br />
agglomeration. Horse furniture,<br />
old spades, the walls insulated<br />
with newspapers whose readers<br />
were long dead. <strong>The</strong> place's history.<br />
This was the first land settled,<br />
Vancouver, 1862, unnamed but months<br />
before Gassy Jack loaded<br />
his canoe with whisky.<br />
<strong>The</strong> Irish McCleerys, disaffected,<br />
built their house<br />
on the escarpment.<br />
This was a hired man's hut,<br />
embellished by generations <strong>of</strong><br />
Gothicizing carpenters. And<br />
here they planted their great orchard<br />
and called it Cherry Street.