Embarrassed by the awe he felt
as a boy touching
a mimosa shut
along the vein, tiny leaves
blinking into supplicant palms,
the man came to understand
that astonishment. Beyond
vegetable with a reflex—
didn’t venus flytrap also clamp,
and don’t sunflowers turn?—
he grasped the aesthetics
of mimosa’s fruitless act,
effect which refused its turn
to cause. Mimosa stands
reiterative, hence defiant,
its only purpose
to shoo the man away
from botany books which might
disclose a use for mimosa’s
sensitivity. He preferred
instead to see in its otherwise
unremarkable nature
a stubbornness worthy
of prophecy.