THE MAGIC TREE

This country walk and the 'Algarrobo' trees inspired years of bedtimes stories for my children and is still one of our favoured paths, through olive groves, past pine and fragrant rosemary, down to the river. 

THE MAGIC TREE

Our favourite walk, tireless chubby legs skippity jumping

around the ‘camino rural’, tiptoed peering at frogspawn as

black jelly dots sprout wriggling tails, whip powered before

morphing into hoppy, speckled froglets in the stagnant trough.

Peeling fallen ‘mandarinas’, oil squirt of sharp citrus bursts in 

orange mist, wipe our sticky fingers on dew spangled leaves,

chewing leggy fennel, green sap zinging liquorice, collecting 

spiral snail shells, mossed stones stippled with emptied homes.

Tread familiar path to the old 'algarrobos', hollowed trunks bearing

looping branches, grounding, rerooting as ancient trees spread their

green canopies over boar snuffled earth, sweet dried carobs jumbled 

like pick up sticks, we snap crinkled beans to free whiff of chocolate.

Home for banana pancakes, honied, butter treat; bubble clean,

tucked in for sleep, spinner of words sinks in the story chair as tired 

children pick the tree’s quest, to a pirate's ship or an eagle’s nest, 

to swing on the stars, imagination sparked by the magic, hollow tree.

© 2019 Jacqueline Knight Cotterill.  All rights reserved.