Desert Flowers -- a poem by Mike Niemczyk

Mike Niemczyk is a San Francisco-based poet whom I met back in the 1990's.  We became great friends and from time to time we still correspond.  He also sends me poetry broadsides, and today I received one of them in the mail.  I really would like to share this with everyone, because he does not own a computer--finances limit him to the use of a typewriter.  Still, I would like others to enjoy such wonderful poetry that swells from his imagination.

 I am proud to introduce this first in a series of poems from Mike Niemczyk, who is clearly one of my favorite contemporary poets.

"DESERT FLOWERS"

How do they survive
under the blazing sun,
not a drop of rain
for weeks, months,
battered
by hot, hot winds?
Where do they find
nourishment
that makes them green,
all those other
dazzling hues?        

Some reservoir
stored inside them?
Or do they tap
into some deep well
that actually exists
beneath the sands,
more than mirage,
hallucination
of oasis?

Somehow they thrive.

And I must be
like them,
even in hours
at odds
with circumstance
and humankind
in this, my own
desert time,
let my spirit
reach for, touch
the rich, wet
source
and yet again
brightly
flower.

©2007 Mike Niemczyk