SELECTIONS FROM FROM THE POPLARS a large group of men line the street from the back door of the Land offices they await an opportunity to gain a piece of BC tree island onto definitive tracks blinks a haze of contact shred through the built developing a bundle of wars war rights of the Crown power distributed right to do things on and to rights later to infringe already the municipality a witness to glory gone hot all in all a grand day, a triumphant day for the City bypassed by the mainline invested heavily in its own railway connections south tap the spikes driven to a band of steel that completes the union _____ endowed by forces of nature, forces such as forest fire darkened save the plumed out stack bowed-out steam system evaporation microanatomy adhesion, stumps of cell walls end-to-end fibre forms under the niddle of machine streaming silver-blue roofs trains below trains above upper tacking texture lines cracked floor of a dry river tracks trace along side nation majorities idyllic sense of security minorities               pauseless respect picking berries on the side of the road; an assertion of sovereignty _____ dead tree standing sunned and whipped dry firewood lichen curls kindle tree taken downtown dragged carcass across forest floor to blackened pit dredge spoils battle, an extreme form of dialogue pain embraced by a loud river ideality acts public out of order wrested, returns                  the mill turns around of its own free will _____ how the eye loves to rest on the water determine to supplant the water purchase a view of the water taken from the ding of the docks looking east, looking west looking northeast an interior view of the Golden Mile early as a city from the river, of new homes to Poplar Island from the River Road the view looking down the launch ramp _____ Cecily Nicholson is the administrator of Gallery Gachet and has worked with women of the Downtown Eastside neighbourhood of Vancouver since 2000. Her work, both creative and social, engages conditions of displacement, class, and gender violence. Nicholson is the author of Triage (Talonbooks, 2011) and From the Poplars (Talonbooks, 2014).