Friends of @ADSactly, this time I want to share a selection of photos of my own where the central object is tree logs; they belong to an extensive and unfinished love of photographing that essential material, as I have done with sea stones, crags, and so on. In this case it is about the same tree, from Guaiquerí Park in the city of Cumaná (Venezuela).

The perspectives from which the trees can be contemplated and thought are diverse. In my case, for this opportunity, my gaze has focused on their compact or bifurcated conformation, especially in their stem, those big logs that have been covered with a rough and hard skin, of heterogeneous forms.

Trees have also given rise to poetic texts at different times and latitudes. One that I consider unavoidable is the poem "A un elm seco", included in Campos de Castilla, the most relevant book by the great Spanish poet Antonio Machado. Below I reproduce his first four stanzas:

In the old elm tree, carved open by lightning
And already half-rotten,
Some green leaves sprout
Come April rains and the sunshine in May.

The century-old elm atop the hill
By the river Duero! A yellowish moss
Smudges the tree’s off-white coat
Over the dusty, worm-eaten trunk.

It won’t be home to brown nightingales, no,
The way rustling poplar trees are,
Them guarding the river bank and the road.

An army of ants climb the tree
In a single file, and deep in its bowels
Spiders weave their grey webs.

_{(You can read a full English version at this link)}

Machado pays a heartfelt tribute to that old tree that may be in a forest, a path or a square, and that, over the years, has become the dwelling of other beings, while time and the weather have left their marks on his body. However, old and rotten, he is capable of delivering a bud - a simple and profound metaphor for life!

Another great universal poet, the Mexican Octavio Paz, Nobel Prize in Literature in 1990, has in his last book, published in 1987, a lucid poem titled "A Tree Within" (which gives name to the book), which he totally copied:

A tree grew within my head.
A tree grew in.
Its roots are veins,
Its branches nerves,
Thoughts its tangled foliage.
Your glance sets it on fire,
And its fruits of shade
Are blood oranges
And pomegranates of the flame.
                                       Day breaks
In the body’s night.
There, within, inside my head,
The tree speaks,
                                       Come closer – can you hear it?

_{(You can read an English version at this link)}

Paz, making use of the ancient, noble and poetic resource of analogy, constructs this text in which tree and man correspond. The poet (or the human being in general), as the making of nature, seems to resemble in its interior the arboreal corporeality, because, as Rilke would say, when I think of the tree, it's done to me.

The outstanding contemporary Venezuelan poet, Eugenio Montejo, has one of the most beautiful poems I have read about trees, and its title is precisely "The Trees". We reproduce his first stanza

The trees speak so little, you know.
They spend their entire life meditating
and moving their branches.
Just look at them closely in autumn
as they seek each other out in public places:
only the oldest attempt some conversation,
the ones that share clouds and birds,
but their voice gets lost in the leaves
and so little filters down to us, nothing really.

_{(You can read a full English version at this link}

Humanizing the trees, the poetic voice presents these as patient, silent, wise beings who harmonize others in their environment and remain in their center.

In another opportunity we will be able to continue sharing poems about trees. For now, I leave you one of mine written especially for these photos.

Cortexes and folds,

protuberances and hollows,
curvatures and elevations,
the tree is cemented,
is plumbed and erected
on his aged body,
about his permanence,
early testimony
that interrogates us.

_{Author's own photo}

_{Author's own photo}

_{Author's own photo}

_{Author's own photo}

_{Author's own photo}

_{Author's own photo}

The photos were taken with my Kodak EasyShare CD82 camera.

References

Machado, Antonio (2001). Poetic Anthology. Spain: Editorial Óptima.
Montejo, Eugenio (1976). Some words. Venezuela: Monte Ávila Editors.
Paz, Octavio (1987). Tree inside. Spain: Seix Barral.

Author: @josemalavem