Mimic
The mimosa tree tosses her many heads at me
like a tease in my kitchen window.
I slide open the pane to breathe in her pink.
I want to talk to her the way she must talk
to the oaks and pines nearby—a lace touch,
white mycelia, a note in the pollen.
Mimosa, your splayed leaves
precise as fingers, litter of dropped flowers,
your halo of black swallowtails, like—
She says hush, hush, nods her wild fascinators.
The butterflies like eyelashes
flash at me, blue-black, blue-black.
Today, I learn mimosa is a misnomer
I’ve used my whole life.
She only looks like a mimic, ignores my touch
(or accepts it, unflinching).
Whether I look or not, she waves,
all tassels and glitz.
I jot down a new name: Persian silk tree.
As if she knows,
she turns up the volume on summer’s lush.
My cheeks flush, my hands flutter—
but behind glass, it is winter in my house.
Why do I want to love her?
Aza Pace’s poems appear or are forthcoming in The Southern Review, Copper Nickel, Tupelo Quarterly, Crazyhorse, New Ohio Review, Passages North, Mudlark, Bayou, and elsewhere. Read more.
“Mimic” was first published in Bayou Magazine.