Amethyst Review

Mourning Dove

Somehow, your song
is softer, even
than the taciturn shade of your feathers
as they return to your sides, on folded wings.

And somehow, your eyes
are the eyes of a sage, warm
and watered, and closed
above the ink-dark band of your clerical collar.

You are bowed above me, on the branch of a tree
that was not supposed to live.
Its tender arms
are steeples in the dawn-light, and you
are a prayer.

Kimberly Beck is a poet from Washington State. She can often be found at a local therapy ranch, caring for a very special herd of Norwegian Fjord Horses. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Solid Food Press, Ekstasis Magazine, and Clayjar Review.

Psalm 113

If walking could cure troubles, 
if each sandprint truly erased a wave, 
then, in one week, we walk off a century. 

Before dawn, crystal jellyfish wash ashore. We step aside, in step. 
At dusk, a blue sun umbrella bobs along the beach, looking for its mate.
At blazing noon, we are hand in hand while the dog circles ghost crabs. 

At sea level we walk, lifted high.
Tearsalt evaporates, maybe forever.

                                      small sandpiper
                                      large sea
                                      God’s sun, God’s whole heaven

Megan Willome is the author of Love and other Mysteries, a poetry collection inspired by Song of Solomon and the Mysteries of the Rosary. She has also written The Joy of Poetry, a memoir, and Rainbow Crow, a picture book. Her day is incomplete without poetry, tea, a song, and a walk in the dark.

Spring Tea

slowly
            the pond woke
to spring

Midori knelt
in her flowered kimono
with its tight, white obi
and measured 
the value of silence
from a bamboo dipper
over powdered green.

Tell me more.

enough  enough

Anita Pinatti is a native New Englander, amateur photographer, and a late-bloomer who began writing poetry in her late-fifties along with a meditation practice. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals including Earth’s Daughters, Evening Street Review, Glimpse, SALT, and Vallum.  

Transit

Love tells you you are everything,
as the mystic says,

but the universe says you are nothing.	
How can you persist this way,

a stalled cloud?
How can you know 

if anything too large to measure
deserves to be called real?

That goes equally
for the very small,

not just the quanta,
but whatever keeps us going,

the spark we keep seeking
not knowing

if it’s large or small
and what we can use it for,

in love or pain.
 

Stan Sanvel Rubin’s poems have appeared in many US journals including Agni, Poetry Northwest, Georgia Review, One, and in Canada, China, Ireland, and Belgium as well as several anthologies. He has published four full length collections including There. Here. (Lost Horse Press) and Hidden Sequel (Barrow Street Book Prize). Born in Philadelphia, he lives on the north Olympic Peninsula of Washington state.

A Mere Crumb

The host presents itself but once a month
full and round
a complete image
and then on other days
it is but a fragment,
but we have always known and were always taught
that in the fragment
we find there the whole 
in its entirety complete
the mere sliver notwithstanding.

Margaret Taylor-Ulizio is a canon lawyer, part-time Religious Studies instructor, and novice writer. 

Wholly Spirit

One tale from so-called Scripture daunted me 
as deeply as a passage from the Tao
until I learned that Myths, like poetry,
use metaphor to help a mind grasp how

one God, or The Divine Soul, from some Higher 
Realm, or Heaven, thought of as above,
descends, from time to time. One Way is Fire.
Another, paradoxically: The Dove.

A forest burned makes fertile soil, however,
as does volcanic ash when cooled at last.
And after World War One, the world said never
again, as some, after The Holocaust.

Some, not all. Is The Dove returning, then?
Or will The Flame be visiting again?

James B. Nicola is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance won a Choice magazine award. He has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller’s People’s Choice award, one Best of Net, one Rhysling, and eleven Pushcart nominations—for which he feels stunned and grateful. A graduate of Yale, James hosts the Writers’ Roundtable at his library branch in Manhattan: walk-ins are always welcome.

To Scatter Where


across the car park carrying the ashes,
the trees bereft
the birds have left
only the heft
of recorded church bells
unnatural chiming

to scatter where?

Does it matter?

a galaxy away the star whorls
in the vortex of a black hole
& light is no more
& time buckles
in the event 
				                  horizon
& what matter disappears
from the universe

when a cosmos collapses,
it overwhelms.

Roll away the stone,

the writhing things found beneath 
think of me not
but I of them 
make something

the universe breathes

on a cold oak bough
by a crematorium chimney,
that lone cardinal cheers,
his two-parted whistle chirped

to scatter where?

Here

black tarmac glistens
where the puddle ice cracks
I carried in these arms
& upon this back this black 
pouch 
	     heavy,
something remains
still
with death comes grief,
guilt-edged relief
perhaps belief.

Rob McClure‘s poetry has appeared most recently in Poetry Scotland, New Writing Scotland, Lallans, Anthropocene, Neologism Poetry Journal and Light. He is the author of The Violence (Queen’s Ferry Press, 2018) and The Scotsman (Black Springs Press,2024). Originally from Scotland, he teaches at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois.

Meditation Instruction

                
The friend who phoned and fumed
couldn’t right himself to center so

I said how it might mend him if 
he found his larger life, breathed 

his longer breath, slipped inside 
what was down inside, made his 

way to his quiet mind. He said no
that would never work, but called

later in the week and asked how
long I’d done it. Sixteen years, 

I said. Do you sit in the lotus 
position, he asked, do your fingers 

form a circle? No I don’t, I said, 
no they don’t. Well, he said, 

I checked out this library book 
and I hate to rain on your parade 

but without the pose, it was all
for nothing. I thought how hard

it had been not to think thoughts 
so I’d get to a space of no space.

I smiled at the phone and said,
Oh, Eddie, you are exactly right.

Laurinda Lind lives in the U.S. in New York’s North Country, close to Canada. Some of her poems are in Blue Earth Review, Stand, and Spillway. Her first chapbook, Trials by Water, was released in summer 2024 (Orchard Street Press). She has won four international poetry competitions.

Ajanta Caves: Leaves from a Photo Album

From the window
of the bus, the caves – 
black pits in the vast 
stretch of craggy rock 

               *

Sun and wind and rain  
of centuries: a bodhisattva stands 
up close with impermanence. 
The swarms of tourists 
soon vanish

               *

Buddhas spring 
like lotuses 
from the depths 
of dank nothingness

               *

I stand frowning in my red dress 
in a field of wild mint: the peace  
of the sculpted past is perhaps 
already a memory

               *

Light floods stone, smoothens it.
The Buddha lies, head cradled
in his arm. I listen – his words 
still reverberate: be a lamp unto 
yourself, be your own refuge



Note: bodhisattva: In Buddhism, a being who strives for Buddhahood and helps others to do the same.

Deepa Onkar is a poet from Chennai, India. She was a teacher at Krishnamurti schools, and a feature writer and literary editor with The Hindu, an Indian national newspaper. Her recent poems have been published at The Lothlorien, Mollusk Literary Magazine, and Sparks of Calliope. She currently divides her time between Chennai and Bangkok, Thailand.

the braid 

Taking happiness and suffering as the path requires the noblest aspiration, a kind and courageous heart, and skillfully developed endurance. —Chakung Jigme Wangdrak

but happiness and suffering
are the path
whether realized or not
the third, peace of mind—
three cords I live with
plaiting and twining
the braid of each day
into equanimity’s strand
offering strength
and securing the rest,
I weave gilded thread
as reminder—
steadiness, the gold
constancy, the way
 

Amrita Skye Blaine develops themes of aging, disability, and spiritual awakening. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University in 2003. She has published a memoir and a three-novel trilogy. Blaine has been writing poetry steadily since she turned seventy. Her poems have been accepted by Braided Way Magazine, The Penwood Review, Delta Poetry Review, the New English Review, Soul Forte, and Chiron Review. Her first book of poetry, every riven thing, has been accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press and will come out mid-2025.