Beautiful Flowers Do Grow In Deserts

See, the thick of the grass really sticks it

to the pick of the parking lot.

The soak in the ground sinks in

this Spanish Harlem growing hot.

The rain runs free down a storm drain fall

and cracks the tar a spot.

So the season grows cold as the snow goes stray

and she grows up in that plot.

But from that frail daughter’s basement room

to the refuge dunes out back,

you’ll find some beautiful flowers

growing up in those old cracks.

See Daffodil’s smoking his cigarette

washed in the midnight black

as Sunflower below the traffic light buys

salvation beyond the tracks.

Holly and Hazel ride drunken and witted

with bigger back road smiles.

Sweet William hugs the stepstone path

with garden gangway guile.

Ivy takes a chance by chasing Sage

away from the river Nile

as the undertow awaits the tossed ones

to get lost downstream a while.

The Lilacs of the Valley always wilt

when left lonely out to dry.

The flimsy Foxglove is resting with the stem

of Thistle and brought to cry.

That young thorn's sister Violet shakes

the morning dew off in a sigh,

and the cultivator returns at daybreak to reap

those waking to the sky.

Though grown in the heat of an uneasy trail

these backroad kids get frail

in the street sand and sunlight

bundled but left out and bought

to hang on city lampposts.

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--Poems from the Sprawl