Once the solitary flyer buzzed her way to me,
ignited my sight, and illuminated the stamen
of my eye, golden iris,
so vistas concentrated their chasms on the pupil
and my hazeled vision was vast.
My mind spread wildfire through the valley,
gobbled up old leaves like books,
calibrated the lengths of fallen trees,
and gauged the damage.
All knowledge entered through a tear duct:
reversed weeping of the impoverished planet.
A tiny sower’s powdered seed
yellowed-in the grid of possibility:
the garden photos of past imaginings,
so fantastic plants took root,
feeling their hungry tendrils
ever deeper in dirt.
No honeyed kiss could stop me now
from the meadowed urge to leave
my milkweed arms wide open,
to cast my own buds to the sky
and welcome the visitation of a tiny pollinator
set to spread my pisteled richness
and settle into another year of making seed.
-Sarah Wyman
Sarah Wyman writes and teaches on verbal / visual intersections and lives in the Hudson Valley where climbing feet kick dust down to a river-sea. Her work has appeared in Aaduna, Mudfish, Ekphrasis, San Pedro River Review, Potomac Review, Petrichor Review, Chronogram, Shawangunk Review, A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Poets of the Hudson Valley (Codhill), and other venues. Finishing Line Press published her chapbook Sighted Stones (2018).