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I live and work in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Jipugtug, Mi’kma’ki), Canada.

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The Halifax Institute of Traditional and Early Music, of which I am founder and director, is here.

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THE MAPLE

June 18, 2016

The Maple

There is a faded black and white photograph
Of my father in rompers
Beside a young maple that his father had just planted

Over the decades the maple grew
Five thick trunks
And vast outstretched arms
Cradling bird nests and my father’s children

It became the leafy cathedral of my youth
Long hours spent aloft in favourite perches
The constant hush of the tree breathing around me
Wild strawberries, wild cranberries in the grass below
Lazy dappled afternoons
Cocooned in its hammock with a book
Or flying on its little wooden swing
That my father made for us

When my adult body no longer fit
Through the tree’s elevated passageways
I admired it still, earthbound

My father has left this world
I visited his maple
But it was gone
So I planted a tree for someone else’s child

© Jennifer Publicover, 2016