Amethyst Review

God You’re Hard to Buy For 

God you’re hard to buy for, love,
with your deep pockets; that massive vault 
I’ve never seen the whole of; and the fact
that you’re impossible to surprise.

You have so much already and it’s just 
not right to give you a scrap less
than top-shelf perfection
but anyway, what DO you give someone
who needs nothing? Truly,
I appreciate you, and it’s not like I don’t see 
the occasions coming every year – 
the day we met; the day I realised you had 
adored me for some time; the anniversaries of 
that time you saved my skin, and when it all started,
or just something because you’re on my mind.

And you do enjoy gifts
given in clear-eyed love, but therein lies
the hitch: this wilted, plaquey heart
that ogles, kneads, gnaws and beats
itself in offset rhythm, forgetful of 
your vows. I do remember
times I’ve scraped together some
resentful token, mad at you again because
of my disease and arrhythmia.
You were nice about it; said you saw how it
had cost me, but it wasn’t what you wanted. 
Times I’ve thrown you stone-toothed,
headached ritual for weeks (or years) instead;
but the gift you want is not a me that’s pressed
into a starchy Sunday best, grumbling and stiff 
in the designated spot, but instead 
the me that rests between your shoulders.

Is it better, in those lead-browed times,
to give you a bad gift? To shove someone else’s
words into a sterile envelope? To face up
to having nothing to give? Or to the fact that
my shiniest, weightiest offerings were
bought with your own means in the first place?
My love, how do you stay?

Lee Fraser is from Aotearoa New Zealand and uses poetry for ogling life’s details, emotional archaeology, and comic relief. Her full-time occupations have included field linguist and parent. She has been published in Cordite, Ink Sweat & Tears, Meniscus, Micro Madness, ONE ART, NZ Poetry Society anthologies, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbook, Thimble and elsewhere. Some of her work is at leefraserpoetry.com

I Live my Life in Widening Circles of Compassion
inspired by Rilke

I live my life in widening circles of compassion
spilling over the world like Kwan Yin’s tears—
dewdrops on the soft petals of heartache
adhering with tender intimacy before falling.
I may not fulfill this destiny,
but that will be my attempt.

I cry with the Earth, and the Four Noble Truths*.
I’ve been praying for millennia—
in temples, mosques, synagogues
open spaces inside the hearts
of the meek and menacing.

And I still don’t know if I am
the stone creating the ripples,
the lake receiving them
or the outer banks embracing
the widening rings with care.

*Four Noble Truths – Foundational principles in Buddhism to understand suffering and freedom from suffering.

Kaveri Patel practices family medicine in northern California. She yearns to mirror wholeness in other beings, no parts left out. She also wishes to see and sense the world with soul. Patel’s literary work has appeared in About Place, Buddhist Poetry Review, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Passing It On, Soul Forte, Touch: The Journal of Healing, Braided Way, The Healing Muse, The Mindfulness Bell, The Mindful Word, Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine, We’Moon, and The Wayfarer. Information about her meditative and literary offerings can be found at www.wisdominwaves.com.

Permission


As you step inside this blessing, 
notice where you are, 
and hear 

the sounds it makes: sizzle of waves’
tumble and summersault.
Notice the smell 

of fish and salt on the wind, the feel 
of wind’s fingers, roughing up
your loose hair.

The grasses on the sand dunes feel 
this blessing and its music: 
they sway 

and rustle like tiny maracas.  

As you step inside this blessing 
step again, again, and run, 
(or try to)

down the dry, squishy sand to the sand
that’s firmer near the sea, 
and step

and step again, lifting your feet up high, 
and—look—go on—go on—
no one’s around—

you can dance now—



"Blessing with Many Rooms" (excerpt) © Jan Richardson from How the Stars Get in Your Bones: A Book of Blessings. Used by permission. janrichardson.com

Johanna Caton, O.S.B, is a Benedictine nun of Minster Abbey, in Kent, England. Her poems have appeared in The Christian Century, St Austin Review, Ekphrastic Review, Amethyst Review, One Art, Today’s American Catholic, Fathom, Fare Forward, Windhover, The Catholic Poetry Room, and other publications. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee.

Love is Smooth and Waxy
 
Love is smooth and waxy, like the acorn 
I found in a greenway by the Sacramento River.
We’d parked our car to take a break, were slowly
walking, passed teenagers murmuring in the tree shadows. 
Playing hooky? One couple making out. 
They didn’t look in our direction. No one accosted us, 
no one asked how we’ve lasted together for so long…
two older people traveling miles through 
music and silences and losses of tire pressure.
I guess we were invisible to those kids,
as the acorn was, hidden in my fist,
warm, like a candle; 
heavy, like a gold nugget;
long, like the roads we’d driven on
through plains in the middle states; 
and aerodynamic, like machine gun bullets…
not like the acorns where we’d come from.
I wish I’d saved it for my collection of rarities.
Since we left that place,
it’s been on my mind...
a flame from the forest.

Joel Moskowitz, an artist and retired picture framer in Massachusetts, is writing a book of poems about moving into a new house at the edge of a forest. His poems have appeared in The Comstock Review, Ibbetson Street Press, J Journal, Midstream, Naugatuck River Review, The Healing Muse, MuddyRiverPoetryReview.com, BostonPoetryMagazine.com, Amethyst Review, and Soul-Lit.

The poem I wasn’t going to write


In a fit of petulance,
I decided I was never going
to write another poem. 
Tears of self-righteous,
self-denial prickled
behind my eyes
as I made my declaration. 
Nobody likes me,
everybody hates me,
I’m going to eat some worms. 
But, then I noticed
piping plovers sunning themselves
on the beach,
each nestled in a little hollow
in the sand,
some tucked down so deep,
only their heads poked out. 
With a sudden jolt of understanding,
I realized they were sitting
in people’s footprints,
temporary nests
carved by passing heels
and barefoot soles. 
I’m not going to write a poem
about this,
I say,
no one cares
and
no one else gets to know
that piping plovers sit in footprints
in their spare time. 
The poem tickles at me though,
it nudges,
I care,
I want to tell about it,
if only for my future self
to remember the sharp flare
of surprised delight to see
a little white head and shiny black eyes
peeking out of a footprint in the sand. 

Molly Remer, MSW, D.Min, is a priestess, mystic, and poet in central Missouri. Molly is the author of many books, including Walking with Persephone, Whole and Holy, Womanrunes, In the Temple of the Ordinary, and 365 Days of Goddess. She is the creatrix of the devotional experience #30DaysofGoddess and she loves savoring small magic and everyday enchantment.

Transcending the Haze

In my mind’s eye, I am at the top of a grassy knoll, my head tilted up, and I am holding out my arms in readiness for the great lift. Caught on the swell of a strong breeze, I’m soaring up into the sky, exhaling as I look down at the awesome country below me. With my hands in prayer position, I head up and up until I reach the summit of a mountain. Here I rest, breathless, looking towards each point of the compass and everything in between, until I can no longer see and there is only that place of imperceptibility where the haze of land meets sky. I have heard this called the thin place.

My childhood was filled with stories and fairytales of pixies, and giants and witches, and the ever-omniscient God at the altar of our church. Therefore, my imagination was rich and prone to exploring all things temporal and spiritual, especially through the conduit of my dreams. I also believed I could transform myself into another being and transcend any place I did not care to linger just by the power of my mind. 

My mother told me that flight was only possible for the birds and bats and a few other clever creatures like flying squirrels and fish, ones that I’d seen on nature programmes on the television. Nevertheless, I believed in my own potential to defy gravity; after all, I was taught that belief was the most important thing, having blind faith. As if to condone this theory, I often heard the adults say, ‘the world is your oyster’, and I believed it, until I tried to test the flesh of that slippery creature and found that the oyster has a very tough shell that is almost impossible to open. 

For me, flight is synonymous with ‘freedom’, a word that consistently filled my adolescent head, and gave me a sense of liberation, from what, I was not sure. Until that point, the nearest I had come to experiencing the sensation of flying, was with the aid of an inflatable rubber ring. Every summer my family would go on holiday to the seaside. It was here, around the age of eight that I learned the art of swimming. At first, Dad would hold my hands, and I would cling on tight while we jumped over the waves in the shallows. I loved to feel the swell coming and going under my feet and the exhilaration of not knowing how big the next wave would be, whether it would roll over my legs or leap up and splash my face. Eventually, all fear subsided, the ring came off, and I trusted my own body to be buoyant enough not to sink. I let go of his hands and experienced the delight of floating in the sea. I found I could move through the water, splashing and swishing my featherless arms. Of course, I was floating not flying.

As I moved into teenagerhood, I became determined to defy gravity, in little ways at first but, no matter how much I tried, I remained landbound. No amount of holding open my longest raincoat and leaping from dune to dune or skipping from boulder to boulder had any effect. At night I’d wake up with a sudden thump and find myself on the bedroom floor. Dreaming about flying was not the same. I became disappointed and depressed and sure that I was forever earthbound, but one day in class the teacher handed out some books for us to read at home and asked us to write a review for our homework. 

My book was Mr Pye by Mervyn Peake. This is what I wrote: In this novel, the protagonist arrives at an island to do his good works in the name of God. As his scheme progresses and he becomes more successful, he starts to feel an itch around the area of his shoulder blades. When he looks in the mirror he sees some fluffy feathers on his back. He tries to rub them off, but they remain. At first, they are like the fluffy down on a newborn chick, but over time they turn to coarse tufts and eventually there are two lines of white feathers growing along the line of each shoulder blade. They keep on growing until they are fully formed wings. They are pure white like the angels’ wings in the stories he tells about heaven. This is very well described by the author, and I believe this is not just a metaphor.

I was entranced by this story, and I wanted to believe it could be true. If I had wings, I’d be able to fly out of the open window, fly away from school, fly anywhere in the world. I’d be a good angel, one that would dash down to help others when they were in trouble. But I was still an adolescent, a sulky one at that. I’m sure if my parents had been aware of my fantasies, they might have considered me more like those more nuanced creatures, like cherubim or seraphim. I wanted to remain human but with wings that could be hidden, folded in a concertina formation between my shoulder blades, and flattened down to appear to be only a slight hump. I refused to have my hair trimmed so that it would grow to cover my back. I was gripped by the idea, at least until I turned thirteen and then I slowly forgot about this episode of my life until now. 

I still dream of flying, and nowadays I do fly, but only after booking a ticket, waiting in a queue to have my passport checked, to be scanned through security, and finally seated in a metal tube with lots of other people. That’s not my kind of flying, not the flying of my dreams. And the only thin place I visit now is after a hike up a steep gradient to gaze up, breathless, at the mountains where I can trace the edges of my world with my eyes and in that way, I let my spirit soar. I know I must leave my ideas of flying to my imagination and let my sleep be the carrier of my dreams. While I remain earthbound, I can still merge with my watery surroundings in the mutual flow of body and mind and let my angel spirit rise.  

Alison Lock connects an inner world with a love of nature through poetry and prose trained as a facilitator of Life Writing for Transformation after studying for an MA in Literary Studies and Creative Writing. Since graduating in 2010 she has published several books and pamphlets of poetry and short stories, as well as a poetic sequence of personal transformation ‘Lure’ broadcast on the BBC Radio 3. She leads regular Poetry for Wellbeing sessions at Conwy Culture Centre.

Julie Sampson’s work is widely published in magazines and anthologies, and has been shortlisted, or highly commended in a variety of competitions (including the Survision James Tate Memorial Prize and Geoff Steven’s Memorial Prize). She edited Mary Lady Chudleigh; Selected Poems (Shearsman, 2009) and has three collections: Tessitura (Shearsman, 2011); It was when it was when it was (Dempsey and Windle, 2018); and Fivestones (Lapwing publications, 2022).

The Good Life is Gardening

Plant and plough, for the hard earth’s hardening.
And remember, in summer, at the ripe fruit’s dearth,
That the good life is gardening.

Soil gives, for sins of bookishness, toil’s pardoning.
In the soul’s fields, idleness cracks the earth—
So plant and plough, for the hard earth’s hardening.

For neighbor-hood, for friendships’ farthering,
Together dig the ground, find the small pea’s worth,
And love. For the good life is gardening.

Our arms grow weak with gold and stocks and garnering,
Garnered for ease, to electrify our hearths,
For plastic plants and ploughs, for the hard earth’s hardening.

From spreadsheets, codes, from white-grey lights—come out! Your tools want sharpening.
You’ve forgotten what it is to watch the ground give birth,
Forgotten the good life is gardening.

When we find concrete cruel, paper work disheartening,
O let us dig, and God’s sweaty, soily mirth,
Let us plant and plough, for this hard earth is hardening—
And let us find, dirt-dusted, the good life in our gardening.

Brendon Sylvester is a poet and teacher. He lives in Pennsylvania, and he serves as poetry editor for the Anselm Society.

Kneel into the mouth of morning

Kneel into the wide open yawn of morning
Touch forehead to floor
How hard of bone meets hard of wood
Cranium winding down 
To the quietest common denominators
Here is where you are safe
Tucked inside the early hour
Day is still dark and woolly
Going through its casual 
Unwrapping before you
Go ahead and have it 
Have all of it
Gift this skinny single jangling silver coined moment to yourself
Allow the slow becoming of now
Just you being 
You and the close vibrations ticking
What you become
When the still rooms of your life
And their fabrications 
Are left to hang untouched in the unnecessarily organized closets
That you are momentarily leaving 
In order to find the place
Where you can float
Separately and enveloped
Turns out this cradle of stillness 
Is all the answer you’ll ever need
Your hands not exactly pressing together to pray but
Not exactly unlike it
Either
Even when you have no interest 
In any of the currently available gods

Ellen Goldbaum Kolin has been writing most of her life and recently started submitting poetry. Her first published poem will be in WailingandGnashing.com.

The Tao to You
 
Early morning, the Tao on a leaf
outside your tongue,
daylight flies cold heart-razors
to vowels on sand, speck, stone—
rivulets and dew can hold
a fortune of trauma.  
 
These days we forage
indoors, for the pulse of blood,
some special peace
that does not depend
on the shape of another’s mouth
--the baby guzzles milk, feels ease--
we gallivant in bedrooms, the living room,
scouring for the still point,
the way to live is the way to live
we slip through the eye of a giggle
and bask in the Tao.
 
I will always sing the words of
the Tao to you
while the wind splits insects outside,
I will meet you
without metaphor,
peace is in the word
and the Tao is the word,
the hum of your babble,
the word the thing,
the thing no thing,
baby, this morning’s childhood
will take you through
the generations, your daydream
at 40, when you feel a leaf
tickle the insides of your chest,
and the little bird
on the sill begins to tell you
of the time you heard your mother’s
words on the air floating at one
with sky, earth, heartbeat, self.
 

Shivani Sivagurunathan is a Malaysian author. Her first novel, Yalpanam, was published by Penguin Southeast Asia in September 2021. 
Her poetry collection, Being Born (Maya Press) and her book of fiction, What Has Happened to Harry Pillai?: Two Novellas (Clarity Publishing) came out in 2022.