Gone Too Soon

It's five o'clock.

He sits on a concrete path overlapping a tiny drain set with granite rocks in the thousands on both sides.

All around is quiet; save the occasional chirping of a sparrow or the distant rumble of a vehicle.

The wind blows freely through the plains, the trees bend and shake in their wake, leaves being unsettled in the process.

The sun casts a long shadow over the rooftops making even the nearby buzzing housefly take on a monstrous form.

He sets his eyes on the mimosa plant at hs feet, admiring the red fruit blooming between the black-tipped thorns. The wind causes the stalks to shake, yet it does not envelope and isolate itself.

An idea occurs to him.

Slowly he lowers his pen tip to the mimosa stalk, and presses against it ever so gently with the same weight of the wind as it blows.

It doesn't close.

The wind stops.

He presses again with delicate force, this time making the same swaying motion as the wind.

It still doesn't close.

However, as the force of his pen tip is concentrated, the two tiny leaves on either side of the tip begin to react.

He finally presses the stalk hard against the ground and watches the leaves immediately consume his pen tip.

The amazing simple-complexity of a single mimosa vine; sensitive, flexible, beautiful and bright yet dangerous all at once, an intricate part of God's wonderful creation.

What have you stopped to notice this week?