Poetry/Prose/Nature/Roots

I Dial my Heart and it Sings in Roots

Reciprocal Nature prompt Roots

Each building you remember — hen house, Sheep shed, corn crib, barn — caved in upon itself, The walls and roofs collapsing with a final Percussive clap, since you last walked those fields. No one you will ever know works that land now. It is as green as Eden. Life rises in the roots, in the leaves. — Roots, by JOHN PILLER

The seed ignored the call of the whistling light.

As one of her arms get ready to tilt to the sun, she digs another in the dark soil, slowing going deep into the brown dungeon, proliferating like meshed sylvan arteries, injecting nutrition, carrying legacy and creating a world.wide.web of underground stories, communicating with, connecting to and supporting earth to hold life above surface, breathing under the moving light.

The silent lender of terra frame work, holding the soil to its bosom, nurturing the sways, the twirls of life — they are the roots.

If we are trees our roots are intertwined cut one down, and the other dies as long as we live we’ll sway in tandem arm in arm, limb in limb — Katy Miles, Codependency

Trees are natures symphony, writing notes in faith. It stands tall braving the glaring sky, swift breeze, loss of organs, knowing it has roots below to see her through the days of pain.

When nature decides to create music, roots nourishes the trees.

Nothing is holier, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree where their roots are resting in infinity.

Roots are social hermits, living a sage life not because there are withdrawn, but because they are born to absorb anonymity and render life.

They struggle with all the forces of life to fulfil themselves according to their own law, to build up their own form, to represent themselves.

You revere trees when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves.

And even more when they stand alone as loners, anchored firmly to their base, as if letting the world know they are enough on their own, in a way speaking a thousand words their lips wouldn’t care to utter.

Trees are penetrating preachers, they are sanctuaries and nothing in nature is more enticing than a beautiful, strong tree, nourished and supported by penetrated, well networked roots.

A tree fell from human greed, will still exhibit its marks of life, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity which stand truly written, with signs of the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured signifies a well endowed life underneath. Says a tree:

A kernel is hidden in me, a spark, a thought, I am life from eternal life. The attempt and the risk that the eternal mother took with me is unique, unique are the form and veins of my skin, unique are the smallest play of leaves in my branches and the smallest scar on my bark. I was made to form and reveal the eternal in my smallest special details.

“Every path leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is mother” — Hermann Hess, Trees.

If trees be life, roots are its abode. How can a tree proudly spread its branches, decorate them with leaves, blooms, fruits if not for the unconditional love of roots to hold on.

You can only grow wings to take flight through the mysteries of the sky, when you are firmly tied to your invisible umbilicals, who once ejected you into this beguiling world.

For an astronaut’s excitement of release from gravity, ask them how they hunger to come back home!

When we learn to talk to trees, we learn the language of nature.

We listen to their stories of survival, living beyond us humans, one tree giving birth to many, creating their community we call forest, supporting and holding each other, knowing the network of roots underneath are unshakable.

Centuries pass, urbanisation cuts through their heart, their hidden bleeding not a deterrent to rise again to the cause of nature, humanity.

When we are stricken and cannot bear our lives any longer, then a tree has something to say to us: Be still! Be still! Look at me! Life is not easy, but then life is not difficult.

A longing to wander tears into our hearts when we hear trees rustling in the wind. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one’s suffering, though it may seem to be so. It is about missing home.

You travel far from your roots, physically and in mind, hanging on to your flapping, but the inner churning will always lead you to the old path you left, but which never left you.

You walk into a land, now abandoned, familiarity as real as the disappearing smog on a mildly sunny day, on run down side walks, looking for that tree of childhood, where even the sky wears a different attire — and you meet a bed of grass, now yellow and straw, breathing, connected with its roots underneath. You find your seat amongst the old, smiling hay, plucking a few from the bed with your thinking palm, and realise this is where you always belonged. The green bed — your mother.

You cease dreaming of becoming a tree drawing life incessantly from the soil below, undying, witnessing centuries — -because now you only want to be yourself. You are finally treading the path you were searching for many years now.

Because roots are home you always return to. Roots are witness you survived.

I am free like freedom today Charting a path called life Floating around like a lazy feather Wobbly and so rife.

I don’t wish to fist my space Where I want to be, Seed by seed, time by time Will reach there in glee.

My dreams have found their wings today My wishes smile in hope The passing whiff carries the letter To my desire’s abode.

My tranquil is on fire today My calm spreading its veins, Engulfed in an experience anew Enraptured I stay.

Call me by any name And expect me to answer, For birds don’t have names of their own- In azure’s ball room, they are mere dancers.

That tiny dot in the Universe Is where I this day belong, Will fill the space with GRATITUDE For bygones and times to come.

I bring my tidings from the pages of history Carry in me the old, Civilisation where HUMANITY took roots, Where silence precedes OM! — Tracing my Roots, by Author

Some Disclosure: I had no photo of roots, so decided to go with some paintings this time. The first two are self-explanatory, but if you are inclined to dig deep click on the links provided.

*The third painting is one of my earlier ones done during lockdown. I included a shady tree with a shoddy, locked house to denote the significant role nature elements played in inspiring and guiding us during humanities darkest hours. How can a tree stand tall weathering a storm, if it did not have deep, firm roots as support ?!

I am really happy the way my Nature articles have shaped up and grateful for all the love it has received from the you. As this will be the last installment in this category for this year, I thought of collecting them all under one umbrella for some ease of read.

You can find them here: Our-loving-houseplants Temi-by-day-kanchanjungha-by-night-pelling-revisited And-here-he-comes The-silence-the-melody-and-one-horned-rhinos-a-walk-in-the-woods When-Stories-are-written-in-clouds The-tree-tale Theatrics-of-the-abendrot-sky Memory-leaves-between-pages-steal-your-heart

• Reading: Hermann Hess, Trees Alex Haley, Roots:The Saga of an American Family

Thank you Dr. Preeti Singh for this weeks Reciprocal Nature prompt Are-you-proud-of-your-roots, as usual an amazing subject to write on.

Thank you Yana Bostongirl and Sahil Patel for all the support in Reciprocal.

Talk of Roots can quickly start conversations about patriotism, which rightly raised by Josephine Crispin in Roots.

Yana Bostongirl made a different dish with this article that bought a smile to my face I-deeply-miss-role-playing-with-my-ex-boyfriend

Thank you to all for your time in visit. May you have blessed year ahead and thus wishing you :A Happy 2023 !

Ending with some root tracing with ‘leaving’ sun and a graveyard: