With wide arms I listen
With hands full of green ears
Polyphonic whispers of fluff
Fine traces of sound
on the bench

A woman and her daughter
look around, the girl stares
and says with wobbling legs

I'll be a mum just like you
with a daddy and a child
who thinks this is the most beautiful place
of all, the whole world, the universe

*

The girl plays with a ball
pulls a flake of my bark
asks: is your name scratched in it?
What is he old, isn't he, triple thick I think
and those lumps, would he be sick?

Her mother laughs and takes the picture
she wished to have had of herself:
the girl, and I incognito

not as wise, not as full
high and wide
of past as I am now
and smaller than what I know

of all the people
who caressed me
of all the wishes
they shared with me