On Roots & Treetops & Powers that Move

There is a power that moves 

in such submission through the world: 

groping in roots, and growing thick in trunks, 

and in treetops, like a rising of the dead.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke

(Image: Vincent van Gogh - Tree Roots and Trunks)

                  

When I saw this post from The Bloomsbury Review via Charter for Compassion (I really need to research them), one word of Rilke’s quote leaped out at me in conjunction with Van Gogh’s rendition Tree Roots and Trunks.

Submission.

Submission is not a word or concept I link with Vincent.

I do not see submission in Tree Roots and Trunks.  I see images of beings reaching with the support of green growth & hope reaching toward the light.

 

I see roots growing thick in trucks & treetops still reaching, fighting toward the light. 

I see a struggle to survive.  I hope that struggle has the power to move toward change.

I see hope.  I see a power in roots & trunks & treetops rising not from the dead, but from the hope & strength of reaching toward the light & maintaining position.

Which I pray fervently is still alive.