“The nurses did their best to spruce up the antiseptic corridors but the smell of pine boughs was overpowered by Pine Sol and no one paused beneath the mistletoe on the contagious ward.”

“He is all pine and I am apple orchard.My apple trees will never get acrossAnd eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.He only says, "Good fences makegood neighbors.”

“Christmas crept into Pine Cove like a creeping Christmas thing: dragging garland, ribbon, and sleigh bells, oozing eggnog, reeking of pine, and threatening festive doom like a cold sore under the mistletoe.”

“IT IS SO EASY TO GIVE INI have been thinking about the man who gives in.Have you heard about him? In this storyA twenty-eight-foot pine meets a small windAnd the pine bends all the way over to the ground.I was persuaded,” the pine says. “It was convincing.”A mouse visits a cat, and the cat agreesTo drown all her children. “What could I do?”The cat said. “The mouse needed that.”It’s strange. I’ve heard that some people conspireIn their own ruin. A fool says, “You don’tDeserve to live.” The man says, “I’ll string this ropeOver that branch, maybe you can find a box.”The Great One with her necklace of skulls says,I need twenty thousand corpses.” “Tell you what,”The General says, “we have an extra battalionOver there on the hill. We don’t need all these men.”

“I found the candles—atrocious air freshening ones that smelled like fake pine.”

“...winter crescent resting in the high pine bough - you fly through the woods like a lone snow bird...”

“The awesome silence of the place crept up on her. The spruce and pines, all still laden with snow, spread their limbs in a frozen ballet, breathing a ghostly incense from dark, arid chapels sheltered by their branches.”