de raiz a hoja...

Today I was chatting with a dear Nicaraguan friend online and he was telling me how a hurricane hit his city and the neighbors are telling each other, "Oh, my orange tree fell." or "Ay, the poor pecan tree." My friend lamented the fall of the almond trees, which he said he had watched grow up and they had watched him grow up, as well. I told him he should write a poem about it, that the love for trees is as inspiring and powerful as the love for another human, being that we're all part of the natural world anyway.

A few minutes later, a middle-aged man who has been coming to the restaurant every morning for the past week and occasionally making small talk with me excitedly showed me a children's book that he had just bought, La Boda de Chimalistac by Elena Poniatowska. The book was about a lemon tree that fell in love with a Jacaranda and eventually they get married. Ah, tree love.

And my friend was very happy because today is Mother's Day in Nicaragua and I told him that my family always buys trees on mother's day.

Just when I thought the day was already filled with trees and love, I looked down at the bottle of red wine our German couchsurfer left for us and there on the bottle, a little grape vine that looks just like a little tree.

So, in honor of trees and love and beauty, I want to share one of my very favorite poems by Juana de Ibarbourou:

La Higuera

Porque es áspera y fea,
porque todas sus ramas son grises,
yo le tengo piedad a la higuera.

En mi quinta hay cien árboles bellos,
ciruelos redondos,
limoneros rectos
y naranjos de brotes lustrosos.

En las primaveras,
todos ellos se cubren de flores
en torno a la higuera.

Y la pobre parece tan triste
con sus gajos torcidos que nunca
de apretados capullos se viste...

Por eso,
cada vez que yo paso a su lado,
digo, procurando
hacer dulce y alegre mi acento:
«Es la higuera el más bello
de los árboles todos del huerto».

Si ella escucha,
si comprende el idioma en que hablo,
¡qué dulzura tan honda hará nido
en su alma sensible de árbol!

Y tal vez, a la noche,
cuando el viento abanique su copa,
embriagada de gozo le cuente:

¡Hoy a mí me dijeron hermosa!