The Tree

Miguel Herrera, Self-Portrait

By Miguel Herrera

The moss grew on the haggard trunk,
naked, feeble, defrosted,
with the antiquity of the perennial moon.

The wind stuck his crunched teeth
stripping
its brittles woodland
without fruits, without birds,
without leaves.
He slept, with the sweet laziness
of a wounded gladiator,
awaiting the hour of his death.

He grew up, as an adolescent
with new hair every spring.
He flourished, upright, facing the sun and
rested in autumn the long dream
under the friendly snow.
Tall and robust, as an adult,
he endured lightning, thunders, hurricanes,
faced rain, hail, gales and
even under the oppressive summer´s sun
hosted friends and foreigners
under her leafy hair.

But the merciless years left traces.
The body became weak, brittle,
thicker, under the prolonged snow
and lost nests and trills,
wounded by the sad rain of autumn.
The sparse hair was covered with snow,
the roots fell asleep
depriving him of sap
and when spring arrives, he slept
a restful dream,
deaf to the swallow´s song
in the sweet stillness of old age.

There he was born and raised all his life.
In the same place, overlooking the same
horizon
and dreaming of other latitudes,
beyond its mountains,
under a foreign sky
cradle of new stars, embroidered
with untranslatable constellations.