Amethyst Review

My Grandparents’ Garden

Until I was seven my parents, four siblings and I lived with my grandparents. They had a diminutive front garden which was awash with flowers and resplendent rockeries as if it was parkland they lived in rather than a small house in a nondescript housing estate. The garden had a beautiful neglected feel to it as if it had been let run wild, but in truth was tended meticulously to seem that way. My grandmother was ahead of her time and ignored the bemused looks of her neighbours and instead focused on the admiring glances bestowed on her beloved flowers. Blossoms and hedges mingled with abandonment, creating vivid colours doused in balmy aromas. Stems of varying lengths rose to greet visitors, extending velvety petals, challenging any passer-by not to reach out and caress.

As a child I’d explore each crevice of the garden, my imagination constantly creating wonderlands for me to go to. Each bush was a place in a far off country I had only ever seen in my sister’s geography book; new places never before found till I Christopher Columbus discovered them. Hidden in each flower was a fairy who only spoke to me, who regaled me with tales of a wonderful kingdom below the garden which I was allowed to visit. I was wonder woman, I was the bionic woman, I was a fairy queen, and I was Ireland’s greatest explorer. I was anything I wanted to be when I entered the garden.

A small wall ran from the gate to the front door. It was on this wall I danced, imagining myself that Russian gymnast Nina that I had seen on our black and white television. The rough stone was coarse under my soft bare feet, toes curled in to maintain balance.
To fall was to bear the wrath of the multifarious rose bushes which were always forgiven as they constantly and ceremoniously released their mesmerising perfume into the air. To walk that wall was to achieve a small miracle, the scars of the triumph blazing on soft legs later that night.

In the centre of the garden stood a smaller circular flower bed, again surrounded by a small wall. This flowerbed held shrubs which never thrived due to the riot of roses blocking any chance of sun or rain. My grandmother refused to give up hope and when one managed to flower her faith rest would be restored resulting in a period of passionate dead-heading.

Up against the railing which restrained the wonderful wildness, was a row of wallflowers in an array of colours. In my memory bees forever seemed to be droning lazily around them, their buzzing hypnotic.

The rose petals were gently picked by my sisters and I in an attempt to capture their sweet-smelling scent in a bottle. They would linger lovingly in the bathroom sink steeping in tepid water until my father would demand their removal so he could shave. They would then be lost to the wilderness of our bedroom, found months later crisp and tarnished. We never achieved our goal.

As I grew bigger the garden seemed to decrease, but even in adulthood I could never walk up the path to the front door, instead always choosing the wall from my childhood fantasies. I would stand tall amongst the plants that had overpowered me years before, nostalgia and melancholy making me yearn for an innocence long gone. I would catch that same look on the face of my siblings. We never discussed our forays into the garden each hanging onto our own escapades and memories, knowing the time had passed for such conversations. It would seem silly and superfluous now.

By the time my grandparents died I had my own house and garden. Cuttings from their garden were well established in mine. It is said that smell evokes the strongest memories. The heady fragrance of roses and my grandparent’s garden is forever interwoven in my memory, transporting me back to the six-year-old adventurer I once was, safe and secure in my world, surrounded by love.

Their roses continued their encroachment of the garden in wonderful abandonment until the house was sold. The new owners had the garden cobble locked.

Maria Kenny has lived in Dublin all her life. She works with children with special needs in a primary school. Her short stories and flash fiction have appeared in journals in Ireland, the UK and Mexico. She was longlisted for the WoW award 2016 and was highly rated in the Maria Edgeworth Short Story competition in 2018. She is currently in the throes of editing her second novel.

Ascension

“Can you see the birds?”
I asked, speaking
timidly to strangers
“Up there, really,
so small now, I can’t see them myself…”

at first, clean, fluid formation
of gulls or white ducks,
over twenty in close unison
the birds startled me, flying so
high, almost out of sight, then seemed to
disappear, leaving only sunflick spots of white
to tantalize, torture my aging eyes

the couple in the pool
giant African-American man
giant white woman
cradled their tiny, delicate blossom of a daughter
on a tube, languid in the warm
pool, empty but for them and me
by some miraculous fortune
in 100-degree heat

cool and relaxed
I’d swum my obligatory laps
in company so unlike the usual
screaming horde of kids
that I wanted to spend the entire afternoon
at least do another 20 laps
just to stay, feeling
as cared for as their baby girl

looking up, floating on my back
I saw twenty or thirty specks, in formation
white as bones, as porcelain, as edelweiss
folding in on each other
as one stirs a chocolate mousse
trails a beaded, fringed scarf
wraps a child in cashmere or hand weave
pleats a loaf before kneading it more—

they flew in high azure
in and out of sight
until I wondered if I’d seen them at all
or only hallucinated
their pure dance under the scorching sun

the man says,
“I see them, look there,” points
and she echoes, “Yes, up there,”
but by then, I no longer see them

Ann Wehrman teaches English composition and related courses online for University of Phoenix and Ashford University.  She has published individual poems, literary reviews, and short fiction in college journals and small presses.  She can also be found cooking, teaching yoga, or playing her flute.

Unknown

‘Life is not what science tells us’
– Bill Viola, Bill Viola. Reflections

Things we do not know,
things we cannot say;
but the water in the sink
drains away just the same.

© Rupert M Loydell

Rupert Loydell is a writer, editor and abstract artist. His many books of poetry include Dear Mary (Shearsman, 2017) and The Return of the Man Who Has Everything (Shearsman 2015); and he has edited anthologies such as Yesterday’s Music Today (co-edited with Mike Ferguson, Knives Forks and Spoons Press 2014), and Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh: manifestos and unmanifestos (Salt, 2010).

At the Edge of Land and Sea

…where the concrete promontory stretches
out beyond the hotel’s civility
marked (still wet) with the imprint of seagulls’ feet

and in the heat-haze, the acrid smell of smoke
where something like the world is burning
but the waves are breaking, slapping, gurgling
as they have for millennia

…and this is the place we want to be
‘Come to the edge’ they said, toujours
not to fly now, but to breathe
into the greater mind that sees
infinitely more than we can imagine

A giant yacht parked by monastery island
including both, capital and spiritual
beyond our understanding
…………………………………………..only

that the world is burning
and millennia have past
and the sun is still with us

…here so briefly
we’ve been here so briefly
the final millimetre of a mile long story
from milky fog and electric storms
hammering meteor showers falling,
shifting continents, as Earth cooled
what do we know ?

As God asked Job,
where were you ?

And what we do, what we choose
minutely mattering, alone as we are
in human form among the stars
beyond all our conceiving

A dream leads us on, then a dream fades
the blessing of the day remains
beyond the night walk’s drunken pain,
beyond the streets
where hell on earth remains

There must be a dawn
to a new time of caring
where we are the heart
we’ve been broken in:
our eyes awake.

A little half sunken slab reaches into the sea,
constantly washed by waves
enough for a man to stand;
enough to be here, to say I am.

                                                Paxos Beach Hotel

31.5.18

Jay Ramsay, who co-founded Angels of Fire in London in 1983 with its Festivals of New Poetry, is the author of 30 + books of poetry, non-fiction, and classic Chinese translation (with Martin Palmer) including Psychic Poetry—a manifesto, The White Poem, Alchemy, Crucible of Love–the alchemy of passionate relationships, Tao Te Ching, I Ching—the shamanic oracle of change, Shu Jing—the Book of History, The Poet in You (his correspondence course, since 1990), Kingdom of the Edge—Selected Poems 1980-1998, Out of Time—1998-2008, Places of Truth, Monuments, and Agistri Notebook (both 2014). In 2012 he recorded his poetry-music album, Strange Sun. In addition, he’s edited 6 anthologies of New Poetry—most recently Diamond Cutters—Visionary Poets in America, Britain & Oceania (with Andrew Harvey: www.tayenlane.com), as well as many collections for other poets, also under his own pamphlet imprint Chrysalis Poetry. He’s also poetry editor of Caduceus magazine, working in private practice as a UKCP accredited psychotherapist and healer, and running workshops worldwide (www.jayramsay.co.uk).

Blue Waters The Sky

The oceans remember
us, moving
to the shore
waves and more waves
remembering

The sand is silent
like a still-breath
holding the ribs
a body of saline
and footprints

There are waves
that do not survive
their shallow ending
exiled
in a stitch of sand and salt

against the shore
I step
into the sea
and I am
everywhere

a light wind, light touch
blue waters the sky
We come from this
and still
we are nothing

but this feeling
this moment
the end that begins

Scáthach

it isn’t the wild scattered heather
or that single settled thistle
rooted in snaking weeds
snarling and snagging
her unruly sun-scorched uncombed hair
trailing unkempt from hill bottom to hill top
masking rebels of yesteryear

nor the giant of a woman she conjures
striding through a hazy uninhabited haar
capping the harsh landscape
determination flying with every step
passed the Old Man covered in moss
no …….it’s not those invoked imaginings
                                               
that was another place
 
where our gritty ancestors of crumbling basalt rest
their embedded stillness steeped
in sensual purple clustered hues
cloaking sheets of bare-jagged drifting-naked rock
anchored in sea water

a bold bouldering shadowy woman
scales the serrated pot-bellied pinnacle
perpetuating otherworldly passage
 
it is she that awakens hearts

choosing when we see her
she stands overlooking the sound
filled with something gentle we can only feel
despite the distance we are close to her
closer than we know
some of us aware knowing she comes
 
only at the right time

for those of us who see through shadows
she appears suddenly a vision crowned in holly
wearing a brilliant burst of green mantle
that settles
welcome her when she comes
for even as she holds us
she will also let go

Ruby McCann is a creative practitioner who holds degrees from Trinity Washington and University of Glasgow.  She has published work in publications, You Don’t Look British, Anti-Heroin Chic, Gaelstrom-1 Magazine, Invisible Cities, Poetry Scotland, Journeys, Word Rhythms, and many others.  She lives in Glasgow, Scotland next to the River Clyde.  Nature and walking inspires her writing.

Memories of a Catholic Childhood

The coming together of hands
in prayer, falls somewhere along
the spectrum of comfort and peace
as if someone else is there, as if
anyone else can see.

The coming together of hands
in a way that Jesus’s own could not
in the end
are we not all just like we were
when we sat cross-legged on the
wooden floor and before reciting the
words we knew, we would contemplate
whether the thumbs should cross over,
securely folded, or align side by side
and we looked to our peers as they
sat beside us heads bowed, to copy
their finger formations and wonder
whether they were properly praying
or simply waiting for the teacher
to say ‘amen’ and for it all to be over.

The coming together of hands
as if in prayer, but not, just a brief pose
like revisiting the street where we used to live
falls somewhere along the spectrum
of fraudulence and peace,
of childhood and deceit
in the most calming of ways.

Sam Rose is a writer and editor from Northamptonshire, England. She is the editor of Peeking Cat Poetry Magazine and The Creative Truth. Her work has appeared in Scarlet Leaf Review, Poetry Pacific, Haiku Journal, In Between Hangovers, and others. Sam is a cancer survivor and primarily uses her experiences with this to write poetry and memoir.

A Windmill

Begin with black, white
and blue. Mish and mash,
slop and swirl, sweep
and dash, dash, dash.
Mark it, flip it, torrent it,
squirl it, mix it up,
give it texture
and a drop of rain.
Lighten in the windmill
to a ghostly image,
paste the horizon of sea and sky
a gap into the unknown.
Bring in the brimstone butterfly
and the yellow horned poppy –
let its petals stand
to tactile adoration.
There must be green
in shades of mingled light.
Darken places where
wild things hide. Heighten places
where wild things roost.
Fill in the windmill –
let the windows reflect sunlight,
let the sails merge with the sky.
There must be the odd red brick
where willow foliage blends,
and tumbling flint stones
where water trickles through
the gaps meandering
down to the familiar stream.
Peer through the lower window
at the wicker rocking chair,
the gingham cushions,
the chequered curtains
where tiny wild creatures
sleep on the window ledge
waiting for her return
with a waft of lavender,
a bound of wet dog,
the sound of put-down sea-shells.

Lynn Woollacott grew up with six brothers and three sisters – all older. She had many jobs from sewing buttons on cardigans to working as a lab technician in an all-girls school. She gained a BSc (Hons) with the Open University and went on to teach environmental studies at outdoor centres in Norfolk. Still yearning to write she studied creative writing with the University of East Anglia. Lynn has been widely published and won prizes for poetry, and has published two Poetry collections with Indigo Dreams Publishing in 2011 and 2014, and a romance novel e-book available on Amazon. www.lynn.woollacott.co.uk

Coming to my Senses

How as a child I love to
linger on the grass.  Trapping
dirt on my pants and hands,
I dust them.

Soixante-sept years and
I still love the feel of her
earthiness.  She invites me to
grow deeper and higher.

Decreasing anti-pills yields
increasing sensation.
Opening a wash of life
force coming out all over.

Coming to my senses, the body
entwines with the mind
the soul, the tree, the
furry buzzing creature

flying softly into my forehead.
A gentle contact with a world
of which I know little.
I am pollinated!

Lee Triplett is a retired software programmer in South Carolina, US.  She studied poetry, piano and computer science in college.  She lives her life as a poet, voracious reader, mystic, bipolar depressive, pianist, queer and South Carolinian.  She immerses herself in poets that attract her and enjoys writing poetry frequently.