The Garden of Cyrus1
in the eye lives
an orchard—sapamber in Autumn
the leafing seasoned voice
inverts in the retina
enters swirling over the treeside river
ovals of mist in elliptic whisperings
in the branching overeye the horizon finds trace of those “vocall and sonorous lines in Ecchoes… in woody plantations, by water, and able
to return some words;
if reached
by a pleasant and dividing voice, there may be heard
the loftiest notes in nature” alive in mist where sunholed eyes
see how reflection slips
from the sky in slight movement
- water-like lit by the dark of this life the yearning eye finds
refractions
of the horizoned sun
as each hollow surface
- Quotatation is from Sir Thomas Browne’s The Garden of Cyrus.
Adam Ray Wagner is a poet raised in Nebraska who is currently residing in Boise after brief stays in Colorado and Maine. Instagram: @adam.or.ray Twitter @adam_or_ray