OK, I realize this is not the song that was requested, but I found it interesting anyway and figured I might as well post it here.

The poem appears in the book Coke Machine Glow by Gordon Downie (Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2001), page 61 (but see my footnote*):


LOFTY PINES [(NYC)]
As sung by Gordon Downie on "Coke Machine Glow" (2001)

It's too hot to sleep.
Let's gather 'round the fan.
We can't do nothin' 'bout the heat.
[So] let's just do what we can.
[And] everything'll be just fine.
Just dream of the Lofty Pines.

Well, I dreamed of the Lofty Pines—
[At] least what I thought they were—
Standing in the forest after nighttime,
Swaying so cool and sure.
Sure had never been so wrong:
Sure, like the title of the perfect song.

Now for the spectacular part:
Just then a pack of matches fell,
A logo of a tree in a heart.
They're from the Lofty Pines Motel.
All the while our dreams were our own.
All the while that didn't mean all alone.

Well, I gave the editor my pitch,
A series on our cultural wealth
About the "error of catalogue[s] and list[s]."
I call it "Why We Fight Ourselves."
If only we had nothing to say.
If only we'd done nothing that day.

"Je suis née pour la chaleur,"**
She said in her Manhattan French.
"On ne peut rien faire de la chaleur."***
We'll just have to take that chance.
We've got world enough and time,
Dreaming of the Lofty Pines.

{Pine
Pine
I dream of the lofty pine
Dream of the lofty pine
Dream of the lofty pine}

----
* The parts in brackets [] appear in the printed poem but are not sung. (At least, I can't hear them.) The part in braces {} is sung, but does not appear in the printed poem.

** "I was born for the heat."

*** "You can't do anything about the heat."

There is (or was) a real Lofty Pines Motel, 400 Manitoba St. Bracebridge, Ontario P1L 1S2, Canada. It might now be called something else. I don't know whether that's what the writer had in mind.