The plants in this poem are real plants, correctly observed, and the poem’s authority rests on that. A prayer plant does raise its leaves — the movement is called nyctinasty, and the species is named for the resemblance to folded hands. A rattlesnake plant does hold its patterned leaves upright and rattle faintly in moving air. An overwatered aloe does grow heavy and topple. David isn’t assigning symbolic roles to generic greenery; he’s watching specific species behave the way they behave and finding that their behaviors already constitute an argument.

“A small parliament of temperaments” is the phrase that sets the frame, and parliament is the exact word. Not a congregation, not a family. A deliberative body, where different dispositions have to coexist and nobody is required to agree.

The prayer plant gets the tenderest reading: “prays to me / with its lone upraised leaf— / a gesture so subtle / it feels like trust.” Trust rather than worship. A single leaf lifted is almost nothing, and the poem argues that almost nothing, offered consistently, is the more credible signal.

That prepares the central stanza, which is the reason the poem exists. “I don’t believe / I have to be demonstrative— / no need to wave my leaves / for every passing emotion.” This is a man defending his own reticence, and defending it against an implied accusation. The construction is careful: he isn’t claiming feeling is unnecessary, he’s claiming display is. What he offers instead is a list — actions, reactions, heart — and a verb that keeps the botanical frame intact: “speak in simple motions.” The prayer plant’s method, applied to a marriage or a courtship.

Then, remarkably, the poem doubts itself. “still, I wonder:” is a two-word turn that reopens everything just settled. The questions that follow are practical gardening questions with obvious second meanings. Does a fragrant gardenia make a good neighbor for a plant that holds itself like an alarm? Does something overgrown and reaching for support belong in the arrangement? These are compatibility questions, and by the following stanza the poem has said so outright: “learning compatibility / with the human / who grows beside me.”

The aloe is where the poem stops being about plants. “its pot swollen / with unspoken need— / a future toppling / I recognize in myself.” A man who has just argued that he need not be demonstrative looks at the plant whose unexpressed need is about to bring it down, and recognizes himself. The poem lets that contradiction stand without resolving it, which is why the final image works: leaves “visible or not” that pray regardless. Either the private gesture counts, or the aloe falls. He doesn’t say which.

The most sustained thinking in the catalog. Where most of these poems arrive at a feeling, this one arrives at a position and then interrogates it, which is a different and harder achievement.

Its accuracy is what makes it persuasive. Every plant does what that plant actually does, so the metaphorical work never requires the reader to grant anything. The prayer plant’s single raised leaf, the rattlesnake plant clutching itself like an alarm, the aloe swollen past its own support — these are observations first and arguments second, and the order matters.

“A small ecology of things that lean” is the best phrase David has written in this stretch. It names the poem’s real subject in six words and extends generously in both directions: plants that need staking, people who need each other.

The self-doubt is what lifts the rating. A weaker poem would have ended at the demonstrative stanza with reticence vindicated. This one immediately notices the aloe collapsing under everything it never expressed and says so. The two positions are left in tension.

The flaw is the caretaker stanza. “attentive, / compassionate” are the only two words in fifty lines that describe the speaker as he’d like to be seen rather than as observed fact, and they sit oddly in a poem that has otherwise earned everything through specificity. Cutting both would cost nothing and would let “learning compatibility” land harder.