Desert Bloom

Paula Lozar

Poppy, globe mallow

creamy yucca flower

flame-tipped ocotillo

​

And floods of yellow daisies

flowing over black lava hills

as if to melt their knife-edges

The desert

is no more or less itself

in summer’s gray and brown

But today it says

pause, look again

and see what, given gentleness,

I can do