Monthly Archives: February 2026

The Woman of Purple
[Lydia], a dealer in purple cloth, who worshipped God, and the Lord opened her heart to hear…
Acts 16:14

It wasn’t only that the rock snails illuminated
the gardens with their slimy trails,
nor that they slugged through the night
in barely audible streams,
it was that they had within them
the glory of uncommon color—
as if they were reciting verses of praise
each evening.  Stars guarding
heaven come so close, that I can hear
their burning sparks and smell
the incense of wonder. Those snails!
With salt and morning dew, I dip
linen and wool, and let the day
deepen their countenance—
a cloudburst sunset, my heart bruising
my skin, tonight I hear the song of snails.

Ellen Jane Powers lives on the North Shore of Boston. Her life and career have taken many twists and turns, but she’s not strayed from pursuing Spirit. She spent 12 years on the editorial review board of a small literary journal from Maine. Her poems have appeared in a variety of journals and in two collections of poetry, Celestial Navigation (Cherry Grove) and Toward the Beloved (Finishing Line).

Lithic Love Song

angular flake grasped in sunlight
stained windowpane
shimmered holy
thirteen thousand years connect
golden
fallen leaves
crisp November 
prayer in glint
soil and time weathered rind
shared whispers
ancient struggle
current hope

*

flake held above me
sunlight pours
through thinned stone
dirt and rain
taken toll 
on us
on weathering amber chalcedony
my eyes greet his tease
write poetry
about history
about our weathering
our connection
between thirteen thousand years
and present


I warble disgraced calligraphy
my sigh awe in dirt
awe in strikes
millennia deep
debitage love song
the screen catches 
my sunlight marvel

Kim Malinowski is a lover of words. Her collection Home was published by Kelsay Books. Her verse novel Phantom Reflection was published by Silver Bow Press. Buffy’s House of Mirrors was published by Q, an imprint of Querencia Press. Reverberations was published by Kelsay Books. Her chapbook Death: A Love Story was published by Flutter Press. She writes because the alternative is unthinkable.

Fern Canyon

Beneath towering big leaf maples,
huckleberries tempt me with their translucent red.
A salmon berry’s bumpy 
bright orange pricks my fingers.
Beside delicate maidenhair fern,
I wander the cobbled stream bed 
lined with dusty sword ferns.
Spring proclaimed by snowy trillium.

I walked here fifty years ago
holding my mom’s freckled hand,
carrying my infant son on my chest.
Moved by the hallowed sound 
of our family’s footsteps,
I called this place a cathedral.
Now she is gone and his son is cherished.
I find myself consecrated anew
in this lush dwelling of the holy.

Now retired from teaching as a community college English professor, and having raised three children, Pat McCutcheon and her wife live in the redwoods of far northern California. Her poems have appeared in California Quarterly, Fish Poetry Prize Anthology , Pisgah Review, Ship of Fools, Sinister Wisdom, and other journals and anthologies. In 2015 her chapbook Slipped Past Words, was published as a winner by Finishing Line Press. Her debut collection, Through the Labyrinth, was published in 2023.

The Threshold of Night

Compline is the Church’s night prayer, facing the danger at the edge of darkness, rendering time holy, quieting minds for rest.


Compline starts with stillness.
Silence. Candlelight flickering.
Shadows dancing on ancient
talismans: wait for it—

          The breath of air brushing
          past, the presence, the cloak 
          of darkness spread gently in

the silence. Holding back the night.
Voices rise, a chant written in the
stars, transcribed centuries ago when
the world trembled with fear.

The breath of air
the presence
You are not alone. Wait for it—
	 
The prayer rises with the incense:

          Be our light in the darkness 
          deliver us from all perils 
          and dangers of this night.

Candlelight flickering
Holding back the dark:

This is how we live on the threshold of night.

Jeannette de Beauvoir is a poet and novelist who lives and works at Land’s End—Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in the Emerson Review, the Looking Glass Review, Avalon Literary Review, the Blue Collar Review, Sheepshead Review, On Gaia Literary, Merganser Magazine, the Adirondack Review, Perception, and the New England Review, among others; she was featured in WCAI’s Poetry Sunday, and received the Mary Ballard Chapbook Prize and the Outermost Poetry Contest national award. More at jeannettedebeauvoir.com