Amethyst Review

Slow Work   

Quaking Aspen, Populus Tremuloides.
One, yet many, sprung from a single seed 

like the 80,000 year-old forest sprawling 
across a Utah plateau, the Trembling Giant.

Briefly emptied of fixed notions—who I am, 
you are, as cracked eggs spill yokes and 

stargazer lilies pollen, change (a word that 
can mean trouble) comes to us as storms 

do to fields. If forgiveness is a flower,
then mercy is the meadow it grows in.

With tears to see through and spit to name 
our pain (we are, after all, mostly water) and 

harrowed as thatched soil. Suppled, we may
welcome others, even our various selves. 

Rhett Watts is a member of the 4×4 poet and artist collaborative in Worcester and facilitates writing workshops in CT and MA. Her books are: Willing Suspension (Antrim House Books) and The Braiding (Kelsay Books). She won the Rane Arroyo chapbook contest for No Innocent Eye. Her work appears in Best Spiritual Writing 2000 and she has poems in journals including Canary, SWIMM, Spoon River Poetry, The Worcester Review, Sojourners Magazine, The Windhover, and many others.

The Goddess of Missed Chances

of missed lives. The goddess 
of the missing lives. The 

footprinted path of where 
we are and haven't been. 

Ground worn down to imprinted 
mud, pressed fronds 

of new growth, snapped 
branches of the old. The missing 

leaves that will never bloom
the other twigs that bloom 

instead. Its desolate goodness
its generous cruelty. Breaking 

off from it paths and not—
no-trails through the glossy salal 

that end and emerge 
from a cedar’s foot, the footpaths

where instead of drenched feet
jumping streams, are steadfast logs.

The words you say and
will not say--yes and never,

no and I will, maybe this
is who I forever am, am I ever--

bridge the gap. Build a new story
across that space. The heavy 

tread of your boots, your feet 
skipping bare across the boards. 

The stream that barely trickles 
roars underfoot. Between boards

and water, yes and never 
air sparkles with spray, fattens with light.

Neile Graham is Canadian by birth and inclination but currently lives in Seattle, Washington. Her publications include: four full-length collections, most recently The Walk She Takes (2019) and a spoken word CD, She Says: Poems Selected & New. She has also published poems in various physical and online magazines, including Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Mad Swirl, and Polar Starlight.

Hiatus

I need interruption.  Hammers hamming
Nails jamming
Precision working against the coming gale force winds
The low country, so many contradictions.
Magnificent sunsets  
 
Clouds that pearl blue and white, iridescent
Streaks circling the Almighty
Gardenia blossoms and palmetto, herons
Gliding hawks, rainbows
Prehistoric marvels in their slow moving terror.
 
Summertime now, but fall is coming; crews hurrying
Before the oceans
Heat up; twisting sand dunes
Into wind tunnels  
The sensors working overtime
 
The rising tides a velvet hammer
Deconstructing the sameness.
Remembering, everything will be cast down 
Suddenly, I need this hiatus
To save my flowerpots, before the trees fly.
 

Keith Melton holds a Master’s Degree in City Planning from Georgia Tech and a BA in Economics and International Studies from the American University.  He previously has served as Director of Planning and Program Development for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Region IV Office; as well as VP of Development for both the Atlanta Economic Development Corp. and the DeKalb Chamber of Commerce (Metro Atlanta).  His poems have been published in numerous periodicals.

Thomas Ponder					

I call the old Doug Fir out back
Thomas Ponder.
Ever since the Valentine’s Day
ice storm took two branches,
others hang there like nursemaid elbows.

His spine is as straight 
as it can be, although his crown
leans toward my bedroom,
tilting his cap to my dreams.

When I hear him laugh some nights,
is he tossing old moons
over his shoulders
like spilled salt?
	
One Christmas, 
a charm of hummingbirds
shimmered his length, 
little carolers,
candles at the back door.

He’s also a flirt – that Thomas Ponder.
His northern branches stroke
the neighbor’s Blue Spruce,
southern branches
dingle dangle the red maple.
Eastern branches wink at the rising sun;
western branches blow kisses to the night hawk.

North winds lift his remnant of green 
like syncopated praise,
like call and response.
You’re a shimmery old holy roller,
that’s what you are, Thomas Ponder.

Colette Tennant is an English professor. She has two books of poems: Commotion of Wings and Eden and After. Her poems have won various awards and have been included in many journals, including Poetry Ireland Review, The Fish Anthology, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, and others. In 2019, upon the request of a national press, she wrote Religion in The Handmaid’s Tale: a Brief Guide to coincide with Atwood’s publication of The Testaments. She has also taught art in Great Britain, Germany, and Italy.

If It Is Possible


Searching for sunrise this morning, east
through freckled patches of window screen.
A quiet yellow glow appears, mellow, serene, 
not heart-gripping dramatic pinks we’re sometimes shown, 
so arresting it feels that one could die happy now, 
complete, having been immersed in such a thing.
I switch to west, our back window view over the river, 
glistening like diamonds, and there comes a faint pink-purple 
blush, underlining the full Wolf Moon, vivid in this waking sky.
Small but powerful, our moon at its apogee, glowing at me 
like a round white grape lit bright from within.

If it is possible to pilot one’s way into a day, 
best way is with full moon above a river, color in the sky, 
and a root centered in openness; allowance for come-what-may, 
nimbly accepting, be it rough, easy, or arresting, 
received softly as massaging, hugging, holding your heart 
with the astonishment of wonder.

Marjorie Moorhead writes from the New England river valley border of NH/VT. She is the author of Survival: Trees, Tides, Song (Finishing Line Press 2019), Survival Part 2: Trees, Birds, Ocean, Bees (Duck Lake Books 2020), and has poems in many anthologies and literary journals. Marjorie’s first full collection, Every Small Breeze, is forthcoming, as well as a third chapbook, In My Locket. 

Places you can see my work

The Little Hours 


Mid-morn, noon, mid-afternoon,
paired doves dip and dab for seed 

where lawn meets hardtop and
the courting male coos.

Mottled feathers, blue-ringed eyes, 
mourning doves hunt and peck

during the hours known as 
terce, sext, none.

Minus the drama of dawn or dusk, 
times for stacked paperwork,

cups of tea. Value measured by
ticked to-do lists. Dollar time.

The twice-twelved day sliced fine,
needs thicker layers, a kinder pace.

Praise for eyes that stare off, 
soften focus. For deep sighs 

body releases from our first home
in the world. Thanks also 

for the doves who wing whistle
and like the hours flee. 

Rhett Watts is a member of the 4×4 poet and artist collaborative in Worcester and facilitates writing workshops in CT and MA. Her books are: Willing Suspension (Antrim House Books) and The Braiding (Kelsay Books). She won the Rane Arroyo chapbook contest for No Innocent Eye. Her work appears in Best Spiritual Writing 2000 and she has poems in journals including Canary, SWIMM, Spoon River Poetry, The Worcester Review, Sojourners Magazine, The Windhover, and many others.

Paradiso: The Empowered Vision
 
Brightness beyond all brilliance, rising
At speeds impossible to guess …
Within this hypervelocity,
Appears, as though unmasked, a blazing  —
White .. like comets alighting  in nests
Of meadow-flower infinity
 
Whose  colour and scent, whose twirling power                   
Becomes speed’s  stillness, the source of all
Light rays and every radiance
Reflected back from every flower.
In this, like plunged in a waterfall
Of pounding baptism, I danced
 
Until my blinded eyes were stretched
Out to a vision which encompassed
The whole of space-time and beyond,
And there I witnessed .. but words, snatched                      
From that light-torrent, are mere rumpus,
Cracked babble, stones placed onto a pond
 
And meant to float, but sinking .. I saw,                
Light’s music and speed’s stillness flower
In marriages of mathematical law,                  
My vision becoming somehow - empowered ..
I saw - though can’t tell what I saw ... 
 

Leo Aylen: Born KwaZulu, South Africa, 9 poetry collections (latest The Day The Grass Came “a triumph” Melvyn Bragg; “Stupendous” Simon Callow); 5 international prizes; 100 poems in anthologies, 50 in U.S.A. poetry journals, 100 broadcast. Recently published in Century; 100 Major Modern Poets; Agenda; Able  Muse;  Amethyst Review; Grand Little Things; Westward Quarterly; The Road Not Taken; Better Than Starbucks; Orchards Poetry Journal; Scarlet Leaf Review; Blue Unicorn; Sparks of Calliope; The Hypertexts.

Bodhicitta


Everything comes from the center.
As Moses diagnosed the 12 springs 
for the 12 tribes in exodus with his staff

let me defy gravity
let me drink of myself 
down through the heart of history 

to the place the pyramid 
wants to be planted.
When my heart weighs less 

than a feather I can survive
the scales of truth
my shape conveying my limits. 

Let me know the difference
between shape and form.
Let me be the halved string

doubled in octave
reaching higher with each loss.
Let me dance in the skin 

of who I intend to become  
making the faces of the spirits 
my own. Let me stand

aligned as odalisque. 
Let me build my house 
where the sheep lie down.
 

Sage Cohen is the author of five books including the poetry collection Like the Heart, the World and the poetry guides Writing the Life Poetic and Write a Poem a Day. She offers information and inspiration for poets and writers at sagecohen.com.

Everything Happening 


My roses are blooming, 
my yellow roses, and a child 

is dying of hunger 
or disease or a gunshot or grief, 

and someone is laughing 
and someone is crying,

and someone is lifting a cup, a star 
is exploding, a heart 

is breaking, the wind is blowing 
over a desert, over a forest,

over the sea, and it is morning 
and it is evening,

it is the first day and the last,
and every moment 

somewhere the Host is being 
raised in the air, 

in the air, in the air.

Chris Anderson is a Catholic deacon in Corvallis, Oregon, and everything he writes comes out of his experiences as a deacon and out of his experiences of faith, and doubt.  He is also an emeritus professor of English at Oregon State University.  He has published a number of books, poetry and prose.   Love Calls Us Here is forthcoming from Wildhouse Press.

Meditation for a Bicyclist


May your trail be long, open, and clear,
no matter if it’s made of earth or asphalt.

May your weather be cool and dry,
with the wind at your back, beckoning you forward.

May the air you breathe smell ripe with life—
early fall sky and sunlight, sparkling joy and resolve.

And should the pavement be cracked or breached by tree roots,
may you coast over them as if they are no hindrance.

And should your tires slip
and cause you to fall,

may you remember that you can always stand up,
get back on your bike, and continue onward.

May you always carry a knowing of the road forward
and your route back, and yet

may you always dare to veer off-path
into the forest undergrowth and make your own way.

May your legs muscles burn and hum, gifting you 
the momentum to push onward, mile after mile.

May there be a rushing of your heart, a melding
of hands and handlebars, feet and pedals,

until you and your machine are one, racing ahead
with spirit as teammate and freedom as destination.

May you always delight
in the journey

Sara Letourneau is a poet as well as the book coach, editor, and writing workshop instructor at Heart of the Story Editorial & Coaching Services. Her poetry has received first place in the Blue Institute’s Words on Water contest and has appeared in Full Mood Mag, Living Crue, Arlington Literary Journal, Mass Poetry’s Poem of the Moment and Hard Work of Hope, Muddy River Poetry Review, Soul-Lit, Amethyst Review, and Constellations, among others. Her manuscript for her first full-length poetry collection is on submission. You can learn more about working with Sara and read more of her work at https://heartofthestoryeditorial.com/.