Amethyst Review

The Bridge of Believing

At first belief is a thick cotton cloud
opaque with tenderness, soft throughout.

Certainty is a heavy stone,
weighing down the plow,
helping dig the soil,
dragging the blade down.

But the in between is a bridge
where you stand
gently pulling threads of cotton
from the cloud,
contemplating the ponderous stone
that gathers weight on the other side.

The in between is something
to behold and to cradle,
something even more sacred
than the thick, tender cloud.

Dolo Diaz is a scientist and poet with roots in Spain, currently residing in California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in SLANT, The Summerset Review, ONE ART, Third Wednesday, Rogue Agent, among others. Her debut chapbook, Defiant Devotion, was published by Bottlecap Press. You can find some of her published work at: dolodiaz.com.

Reading the Leaves

Liz texted me a striking
photo that she’d taken: 
a red autumnal maple leaf 
lies on a bed of gray leafmeal 
decay trash. One old brown 
leaf, still well-defined as such
and of a different type
I’m calling oak, just barely
touches fingers with that bigger
central one, whose veins
are forkèd yellow lightning bolts
against a scarlet sky.
Showing at the bottom 
of the frame, a few fresh
green and smaller leaves point up.
The picture is astounding 
in its beauty, which is enough,
and yet I cannot help interpreting 
the image in a personal way, 
as one arranged by fate,
whatever that might be:
I’m of the human stem.

Robert Estes, who lives in Somerville, Massachusetts, got his Physics PhD from the University of California at Berkeley and had some interesting times using physics, notably on a couple of US-Italian Space Shuttle missions. Since then, 50-odd of his poems have appeared in literary journals, including The Louisville Review, Gargoyle, Cola Literary Review, The Moth, Viridine Literary, Full House Literary, Masque & Spectacle, Constellations, Tipton Poetry Journal, Anacapa Review, The Madrigal, Book of Matches, and Sierra Nevada Review.

Coherence

After sedation, I wake up in a chapel. My love
has come swelling out of me to fill
the makeshift room of block walls
and curtains like a haze that curls
around us as we sit here, spiriting.
I see us as we are—a Whole of parts—
me in the bed with my heart
beeping through the machines
as I open my eyes, my beloved
in the chair holding me together
along with my purse, the dogs 
at home keeping watch 
by the window—all here in the vapor. 
Even the saltine cracker crumb
on the floor has always been The Body.
It feels like heartbreak and sunrise
and thunder and a drop of rain
falling from the tip of an open flower. 
Like in a dream, I know the layers of being 
through which Love flows unchecked.
If I hold your hand, it is because Love 
carries your pain with you. Listen,
we are always here in the arms of Time—
distinct and one, healed past healing,
loved entirely, beyond knowing.

Jenna Wysong Filbrun is the author of the poetry collection, Running Toward Water, forthcoming from Shanti Arts in 2026. Her poems have appeared in Blue Heron Review, Deep Wild Journal, ONE ART, and other publications. She practices poetry to deepen her awareness of connection and loves to spend time at home and in the wild with her husband, Mike, and their dogs, Oliver and Lewis. Find her on Substack @jennawysongfilbrun or on Instagram @jwfilbrun.

The Holy Calling

Silhouettes of strangers
stipple the dark field 
behind my house
that stretches all the way
to the rocky crags
bordering the sea.
I watch them from my window.
Just enough moonlight
settles softly on their shapes
for me to sense their tension,
their fear, their anticipation.
They must await a calling.
I long to join them in the field,
to infiltrate their eerie tableau vivant,
to stand still and tense
as I await the call that will lead me
from my two-dimensional existence
of banality and indifference
into a three-dimensional life
of abundant joy  – 
the life I have always believed
was meant for me –,  not this life 
of cracked emptiness within, 
an emptiness whose rusted scales 
scrape until they lacerate me inside.
I long for a lush sustenance
made of hope, of faith, of possibility.
I must join the strangers in the field.
Surely they seek the same thing.
I cannot endure much longer
this hollow hunger in my soul.
Somewhere there must be sounding
a holy calling to better things.

Cynthia Pitman, author of poetry collections The White Room, Blood Orange, Breathe and Broken, has been published in Amethyst Review, Literary Yard, Bright Flash Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Third Wednesday (One Sentence Poem finalist), Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art (Pushcart Prize nominee), and other journals, and in Vita Brevis Press anthologies Pain and Renewal, Brought to Sight & Swept Away, Nothing Divine Dies, and What is All This Sweet Work?

When Gabriel Visits

Will you be able,
when Gabriel visits,
to quell your questions
as Mary did?

Annunciations happen daily.

So often
Gabriel has been sent
to make this simple request:

God would like to be with you.

It never makes sense,
no details of how or why,
yet Gabriel,
dutiful messenger,

slips through the back door
of your life, unexpected,
offer in hand.

Like the day your sister was dying
and he suggested to have God
sit with you, by her bedside, 
if you like.

Too sad and too weary to speak,
you nod

and her dying hours 
became, in that moment,
luminous and holy,

the cramped room so heavy
with the breath of love
you knew the invited one
had arrived.

And you knew somehow
all would be well
because 
you said 
yes.

Anne Magee Dichele serves as Dean of the School of Education at Quinnipiac University. A life-long commitment to daily meditation and spiritual reflection has led to two poetry publications by Antrim House, Waiting for Wisdom and Ankle Deep and Drowning. Two of her poems were recently published in Thin Places & Sacred Spaces by Amethyst Press. Anne lives in New Haven, Connecticut with her dog Seamus Heaney. She is joyous that her wonderful children and granddaughter live nearby.

Bubble Wrap Rosary


So, I must confess that it was
Wholly with pleasure and devotion
That I watched my granddaughter
Snap, rapt with such intensity,
Joyfully smiling, at each pop.
Methodically she works her way 
Through each bead of bubble wrap, 
Which I had cut in a strip so precisely
That there would be exactly fifty-nine 
Beads. There is no mystery to her
Innocence, nor any meditation in her
Play, no guilt in her distraction. One last
Pop, then there is silence heaven sent.
She looks up at me, no need to repent.

Bruce Morton divides his time between Montana and Arizona. He is the author of Planet Mort (FootHills, 2024) and the chapbook, Olive-drab Khaki Blues, forthcoming from FootHills Publishing. His poems have appeared in numerous online and print venues. He was formerly dean at the Montana State University library.

Compass me about 

Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; 
Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. - Psalm 32


I’d like a hiding place, please
I don’t say as I sit in a circle
Of fellow faculty members 
Most of whom I barely know
We’re passing our talking piece
A green plastic compass
I’m lucky to be last, yet still
Stumble over words I want
To be true not trite
We’re supposed to say how 
We feel, what we noticed 
Upon approaching the circle
What I feel is that my skin is on 
inside out, I don’t say
My feelings are giants, I don’t say
I do tell a diluted truth my emotions
Are many and mixed–fear and
Gratitude for getting to teach
This new class to our newest students
A challenge wanted, wished for,
Now arrives with so many what-ifs–
I tell a hope that there’s an undercurrent of 
Peace and trust that all will be well.
Hours later, a revision visited, 
What I wish I had said
I have lately felt lost
Like being left in a strange city
With a map that I can’t read,
Possibly for another place so 
I can’t get my bearings 
But the message I taped above   
My office desk declares:
God is where the lost things are
Plus–
Someone just handed me 
A compass. 

Michelle Hasty is an education professor in Tennessee. Her academic writing has been published in literacy journals, such as Voices from the Middle and The Reading Teacher. Her short story, “Prone to Wander” was published in the Dillydoun Daily Review. Her poem, “Overheard, an offering” was published in Bluebird Word.

a story of things

                … and light
    the soil and the Moth
    my chin on the fencepost

    by the author, 1972


we stitch magic
and say that

	    this thread, these threads,
	    warp, weft, color, texture

are the salamanders of truth
and think we are done.

	    except
		    the salamander
		    is just going to be salamander.
 
if we ignore this and keep
sewing, cross-stitching, dabbling

	    making truths of ideas that make us
	    believe without cause, cage us
 
	    inside our brittle beliefs, embroider
	    the blackness, then we become

	    the benumbed zoo animal
	
	    the salamanders
	    visit on weekends.

***

the air speaks us
and says what is this stone?

	    what is this moth?
	    as if saying what is this mind?

until we know 
it is pointless to go further.

	    except
		    the air
		    just wants to sing.

if we ignore this stone
we go deaf to all stones.

	    hold the stone. listen. take it
	    deep inside because
 
	    stars are too hot,
	    too huge, to hold —

	    too much like an answer
	
	    and too faraway 
	    to hear them sing.

***

the song of stones
dropping through a mind.

a salamander
holding water in place.

a moth
holding air in place.

light. breath.
threads.

ponder. witness.
sing.

love. kindness.
a sort of sweetness.

those truths.
a practice.
 

Luther Allen writes poems from his mostly unmanaged 10 acres of mountainside near Bellingham, Washington. His academic work centered primarily on biology and geography; he is a retired building designer. He has published two volumes of poetry: The View from Lummi Island and A Spiritual Thread (see https://othermindpress.wordpress.com). His work is included in numerous journals and anthologies. He views writing as his spiritual practice.

The Ubiquity of Candles

“…[A] dimly burning wick he will not quench…” 
-Isaiah 42:3 NRSV

For a long night of years, she’d thought candles
had given light a bad name. They were always
trembling and flickering and being snuffed out,
their wicks smoldering. Everyone had so many
because they didn’t last long even if

they stayed lit. The deep-down truth
was that most days she felt like a candle—
fragile. Candles, the very ubiquity of them, 
reminded her that her light was too frail to merit
mentioning. Her night of years was full 

of such thoughts until the hurricane forced
her to pull all-but-forgotten candles out
of bottom drawers. The storm had snapped
the strong-not-fragile light poles, yet here
the candles gleamed when the dark had otherwise

gone untouched. Their dim flames kindled 
questions in her mind: What if blown-out candles 
didn’t truly go dark? What if their light lingered 
at wavelengths beyond her perception? What if 
the still-burning light from every candleflame 

that had ever quivered would one day re-emerge 
into the visible spectrum, but stronger and brighter, 
like starlight drawn near? The flames danced 
and glimmered until they became tongues of fire 
fallen on her and she the wick blazing blue. 

A moment later she was herself again, but stronger 
and brighter, somehow. Some days 
she would seem to smolder, to forget the long 
night of years had ended. But the candles, 
the very ubiquity of them, would remind her.

Holly Wells‘s fiction and poetry have appeared in The Magazine of History and Fiction, Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal, The Windhover, and Sojourners, among others. She lives in Mississippi and has taught English at both the high school and community college levels.

Pardon

The road away lifts like a kite and catches
in a gust of morning. Something small, someone 
lost, could ride on that kite and flutter sunward.

My eyes are in the maples – no longer bound
by lid and bone. They are owls that didn’t
blink at the corona of another day.

Light tilts to fill a hollow, to open me
to blue. This pang is at the nerve of each
new feather that prays to the wind.

What saves me is the buoy of air. I am a child
on a shoulder she knows. The road sways
to that old step; it rises to the tug of my string.
 

Melanie McCabe is the author of four books of poems, most recently the forthcoming All The Signs Were There, which won the Longleaf Press Poetry Prize. Her debut novel Road Longer Than Memory will be out from Oceanview Publishing in June of 2026. Her memoir, His Other Life: Searching For My Father, His First Wife, and Tennessee Williams, won the 2016 University of New Orleans Press Prize.