My Joy Is In… Siobhan Ratigan Green

My Joy Is In…

Nature. Plants, leaves, roots. Perfect imperfection just like body, mind, nerves, neurons, spinal cord: nervous system. Roots communicate; they keep the earth alive, working with mycelium. The spinal cord and brain use messages; they keep the body alive with neurons. Dopamine, serotonin, chlorophyll, oxygen— they produce their chemicals and keep the body surviving, keep the earth spinning. My joy is in nature. Plants, leaves, roots. Perfect imperfection: each leaf unique, but helping and doing their job; each cell unique, but helping and doing their job. Their bark, their skin, you could say; their vertebrae, you could say, protects them.

You walk out the door into the outdoors, and you see EcoSYSTEMS: the roots helping the water,

the trees helping small fungi. You could say the nervous system helping the endocrine system, the nervous system helping the digestive and excretory systems. Subconscious. You don't feel it. You don't see it. But it’s there. My joy is in nature. Plants, leaves, roots. BOOM! SNAP! CRASH! It’s beautiful; it works together, but it is not perfect. Anthracnose is attacking leaves. Parkinson's disease is attacking cells. Bell's palsy, Alzheimer’s: rust, needle blights. It may go wrong, but it may also go right, and when it does, it is beautiful. My joy is in nature. Plants. Leaves.

Roots.

Siobhan Ratigan Green, Grade 7 Sanford Middle School, Minneapolis Teaching Artist: Frank Sentwali