Présences du littéraire dans l’espace public canadien

Dad,

What can you see from your poplar tree,
looking back through the wind and wheat?
A Fraser River ebbing high, whose
banks yearn for your feet?

Where is it you are looking,
from your branches up above
the fish ponds that your Father built
and the sleeping Holland bulbs?

Are you looking to the sunny East,
where you first began your climb -
the East where you are still a child
with pockets filled with time?

Are you looking to the Southern warmth,
where trees are always in bloom -
the South that fills your lungs with love
as your children keep the child within you?

Are you looking to the dusky West,
where the day seeps toward the sea -
the West where life reminds us
of what all we’ve witnessed means?

Away on in the treetops,
keep your compass poplar green.
But as you search for where you’re going
hold close the places you have been.

Spending all these hours
Alone by pretty flowers
Beside these towers

Through the field of grass
Buildings grow by the mass
Nature falls fast

Sweet scent in the air
Flowing vividly the hair
Perfect math, the stare

Trading on the soil
Untainted by war’s recoil
To rich and royal

Enjoying cool pond
Together, forever bond
Destiny not wronged

Together
let’s walk hand in hand
and leave reality
in the shadow

With these hands
I mended a broken heart
and grew it into
a garden

A symphony of flowers
singing a new tune
with each step upon the staff

My heart fell
but the wind brought it back
and with it came
a new fragrance

Step in,
indulge yourself
and become
the creator
of your own story

Here,
I can fly,
laugh,
sing,
dance . . .
here,
I am free

Words cannot explain
the beauty of this sight
and the smell of this new beginning

and yet again
I am in love
with the sight
sound
and smell
of the flowers

Someone has painted
this picture
with a spade and all the
colours of the natural earth

Island plantings,
green grass tides lap
at the edges
of blue flower reefs

In the seed I truly live
and with open hands I give

Between these trees, the
ferns grow,
along this path, I go

A hundred shades of green
are enough
but still,
the glorious afterthought of flowers

The trees tick to the
flowers tock:
from fade to beauty,
this giant clock.

These evergreen buttresses,
these cloistered ferns,
these windows of stained life,
are built for you.

The crow calls the gardener
to his bed,
but leaves him tired,
aching, fed.

Gardener, have you left space
for the next plant,
the one I can’t yet imagine
that will make this place
complete?

Oh crow! What does
the tree give you in return
for all that good advice?

I the flower, you the eye.
I am rooted, you pass by.
Come the winter, we will part,
But in the Spring,
O, let us start!

The bird calls to the branch
and so
then next, to my heart
the bright notes go.

Beneath your feet
this garden’s genius lies:
Roots touching in the dark,
seeds most sly.

A cloud dances past
the sun, and for a moment
this can all be seen.

bountiful flowers
dutiful trees
Awe struck by
the beauty.