This is one of those constraints that turned out to be so beautiful I am forever in awe and wonder if it was whispered to me by an angel. I don’t love a lot of my poetry, some of it I hate, but this one….
I found this in the desk drawer—Forgotten, It is end sound repeats to the next line.

• In the White Orchard:
• Alone as the midnight-hours
• towers above;
• below-me.
• Oh me,
• alone in a white-orchard
• tortured by a memory.
• Remember beautiful-eyes.
• Lies fall silent on deaf-ears.
• Fears, they say, adds to your-age.
• Rage, they say, depletes the years,
• Tears, they say, blind bright-eyes.
• Ties you to thoughts mistaken.
• Dying embers, cold-ashes
• dashes hearts that are-aching
• raking embers of cold dreams.
• Ashes in the white-orchard
• tortured by beautiful-eyes
• lies alone in winter’s discord.
• Beautiful-eyes,
• lies that fall on deaf-ears,
• fears that are reflected in your-age,
• rage blinds bright-eyes,
• ties you down and are-aching,
• raking in the white-orchard,
• tortured. Cold-ashes,
• dashes our hearts that
• by the memory of beautiful-eyes,
• Lies.

In “In the White Orchard,” Sarah B. Royal unveils a poetic form so organic and haunting that it feels less invented than discovered. Each line seems to lean into the next, as if language itself were breathing — the final sound of one phrase becoming the first syllable or word of the next. This recursive echo creates a seamless continuity of thought and tone, turning what might have been a sequence of lamenting lines into a woven circle of sound. This rare structure, in which the end sound of one line becomes the beginning of the next, can be described as end-link verse or, more aptly, echo-chain poetry — a self-creating form where sound dictates syntax and emotion alike.

The Nature of the Constraint

In traditional poetics, end rhyme binds lines together through sound repetition at regular intervals. In contrast, “In the White Orchard” does something far subtler: it fuses the end of one line directly into the next, allowing the poem to move not by rhyme alone but by sonic inheritance. The boundary between lines dissolves; meaning flows continuously, tethered by the shared echo. Each line is born out of the previous one, creating a living linguistic chain.

For example:

below-me.
Oh me,

and later,

cold-ashes
dashes hearts that are-aching

Here, “ow” – “me” becomes the seed for “Oh me” , and “d” – “ashes” sprouts into “dashes.” This technique transforms repetition into evolution — the echo doesn’t merely mirror but generates. The poem thus achieves a self-renewing structure: it moves forward by returning, progresses through recursion.

This form could be called a Reverberation Poem — a constraint where the end sound or word of a line must begin the next line, producing a continual acoustic thread. The poet is bound to the resonance of her own last utterance, turning sound into the compass of composition.

What results from this constraint is a kind of musical inevitability. The repeated end sounds pulse like a heartbeat or a tolling bell — a motif that suits the poem’s tone of solitude and remembrance. The orchard itself becomes a space of echo: a white field where sound reverberates, where every word lingers before fading into the next. The poem’s repetitions — “ashes,” “eyes,” “lies,” “orchard,” “tortured” — form both sonic and semantic loops, suggesting that the speaker is caught in memory’s recursion, unable to escape the sound of her own longing.

Each repeated ending becomes a mirror of grief:

Ashes in the white-orchard / tortured by beautiful-eyes

The line break here performs emotional labor —“te”- “orchard” resolves into “tortured,” fusing place and pain through echo. This kind of repetition is not decorative; it is the poem’s central logic. The constraint transforms repetition into revelation: the same sounds recur, but their emotional context shifts each time, mirroring how memories reappear altered by time and sorrow.

Unlike mechanical constraints, this form feels organic— as if received rather than engineered. There is something almost sacred about how the sounds align, as though guided by intuition rather than rule. This blurring of conscious craft and divine accident recalls the traditions of mystical poetics — Rilke’s dictations, Blake’s visions, or Hopkins’ “inscape” — where form itself becomes revelation.

The constraint, though technical, becomes metaphysical: the end never truly ends; each closure births continuation. The repetition of “beautiful-eyes,” “lies,” and “ashes” weaves a cycle of love, loss, and remembrance that mirrors the eternal return — the way grief and beauty echo through a soul that cannot forget.

“In the White Orchard” demonstrates how sound can transcend structure — how a simple constraint can unlock profound emotional and spiritual resonance. The poem stands as a testament to the mystery of constraint poetry: that limitation, paradoxically, reveals infinity.

Through this echo-chain form, Royal crafts not only a new poetic structure but a philosophy of being — one in which endings are never final, memory never silenced, and beauty, even in decay, continues to speak. Each echo is both grief and grace: a whispered assurance that nothing truly ends where love has sounded.