Botany, Mackenzie Hyatt

Botany

I have learned to be less like the fern, Mimosa pudica, folding my fronds at a touch, silent bipinnate applause. Mackenzie Hyatt

I am now more like a venus flytrap, Dionaea muscipula, offering nectar through great soft fangs, interlocking.

I know that I am ancient like the maidenhair tree, Ginkgo biloba, with a lineage of mitochondrial mothers, before there was a word for mothers.

I realize that I am brand new like the wild ginger, Hexastylis finzelii, immature and largely unknown but a moment in the terrestrial eye.

I love like the blood-red amaryllis, Hippeastrum reginae, stubborn and simple and loud, a perennial, never prodigal son.

Water me, and I will grow. Don’t, and I may still grow.