It had curled upon itself as it followed our sun on its annual journey, it is a barley twist of the wild kind.
These fissured lines of silvan wisdom and the traumatic scars of disease, storm and wind are it’s medals of honour.
The stump itself has cracked revealing it’s ancient heart of adamant wood.
Over the coming centuries this rent will deepen until an arboreal cave is formed.
These are no infirmities though, they are in fact the graceful signs of ageing common to all our veteran trees.
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Photo: Acebuche at Saladaviciosa. Courtesy of the author.