Regardless of what we think of them,
the plants keep rising —
through broken earth,
through poisoned rain,
reaching always
toward the sun.
In this fragile planetary moment,
they offer us another way
of being alive:
quiet, ancient,
and fiercely green.
They are not scenery.
Not decoration.
Not machines built
to serve us.
They breathe oxygen into our lungs,
turn sunlight into sugar,
and build our bodies
from the light they gather.
Before our first heartbeat,
they were already preparing
the world for life.
And still, we barely see them.
They sense the world
in ways we cannot imagine,
feeling light and gravity,
moisture and touch,
exchanging messages
through roots and fungal threads.
They inhabit a world of information
hidden from our eyes,
reminding us that intelligence
does not require a voice,
a face, or a brain.
Now, as our planet trembles,
the plants keep rising.
Root into darkness.
Stem into light.
Quietly turning
sunlight into life,
earth into bodies,
air into breath.
They remind us
what we have forgotten:
we were never separate
from the living world.
We are made of it.
We owe our lives to it.
And the thin green thread
that holds us here
is more fragile
than we ever imagined.
Eileen J. Marum, Marion