Amethyst Review

Uma

Soft gusts, the windows down, I’m reading the
Upanishads.

The parking lot is overfull.
It’s STEM night at my daughter’s elementary
school: programmable robotic arms,
volcanoes, mirror tricks,
prismed light and laser beams,
the fecund hollowness within the seed,
the crowding furrowed brows, delighted eyes,
the ancient wonder veiled,
but also intimated.

I close the book and think,
“What we can never comprehend
is that by which we comprehend the world.”

A toddler waiting with her mother near
the door grips spring’s first meadow garlic shoots,
lifts chubby fingers to her nose, leans back
her head, and laughs into a flaming sky.

Too easily, too easily,
we all word-wrap the mystery.
Sophia, Uma, 
wisdom,
take my hand.

Steven Knepper teaches in the Department of English, Rhetoric, and Humanistic Studies at Virginia Military Institute.  His poems have appeared in The Alabama Literary Review, The William and Mary Review, First Things, Presence, Pembroke Magazine, Seminary Ridge Review, SLANT, The American Journal of Poetry, and other journals.

Along the Shaded Woods


i talk in frenetics at the midnight hour
before time slips beyond the skyline 

from my star-flecked room, as a meditative darkness 
falls in circles. caught between the passage 

of concentric navigation, i memorize 
the lost in found with space carved out 

for emptiness, reframe my light upon 
the nurtured grace of suffering.  

now the lilac dust speckles the garden.
the metaphors litter the yard.

this vessel is a temple and i have risen
here before: tilting on the middle path

towards waking. along the shaded woods
thrives a whirlwind of devotion, yet 

the flower feels its ache as it still opens.

Lydia Falls resides in the woods of New York after living abroad in South Korea and Taiwan. Her poetry collection, Beneath the Heavy, was published under Merigold Independent (2021). Lydia’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Connecticut River Review, Midway Journal, Washington Square Review, Here: a poetry journal, and elsewhere. www.lydiafalls.com

Thief of Joy

I’m not sure where I lost my fear of joy.
I must have dropped it
getting out of the car at the airport
five years ago maybe,
or forgot it with my coffee mug
on the counter of the information desk
at the Fort Wayne Science Museum.

I used to be a thief of joy,
sneaking glimpses
when God’s back was turned—
brief but unforgettable—
like sunrays slicing through clouds.
As a child I was warned
never to look into the face of God
by religious people afraid to peer
into the pond of their own darkness.

But now
when those waters lay still in me,
I listen for the curve-billed thrasher
swooping into my yard for a bite of suet, 
and if the sun slants just right,
catch my reflection in the light of his eye
and the flood of a moment’s wonder
drowns me in a no-longer-secret ecstasy,
and the insight
that I might as well enjoy it.

Alfred Fournier is a writer and community volunteer in Phoenix, Arizona. His first poetry collection, A Summons on the Wind (2023, Kelsay Books), was nominated for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. His poems have appeared in Amethyst Review, Orchards Poetry Journal, Gyroscope Review, The Sunlight Press and elsewhere. Twitter (X): @AlfredFournier4, alfredfournier.com.

Sabbath in the Hills

Before I backslid myself, I shook my head
over backsliders who felt nearer God’s heart in a garden,
or worshiped just as well in the hills—

yet here I am of a Sunday,
up where the distant steeple looks like the point of a pin.

I’ve found a whole congregation
of white Hobblebush, enveloped in Quaker-ish stillness,
and paused to share it.

It is the seventh of days,
set apart for rest after industry.  I have often groomed
the trail here, or reworked a few poems

in the cool of morning.  Have left
no word of thanks, forgiveness, or apology unspoken.

Now I reflect on what got done
or redone this week—all perhaps more good than not.

Meanwhile, Hobblebush are the nuns of the hardwood.

To accomplish nothing more 
than to be here, alive and together, is their devotion.



In retirement, Russell Rowland continues his work as a trail volunteer for the Lakes Region (NH) Conservation Trust.  His poetry has appeared in over a hundred small journals. His most recent books, Wooden Nutmegs and Magnificat, are available from Encircle Publications.

I am still on clock time

I am still on clock time
not digital time
the clock hands return 
again and again
to their folded hands prayers
and God is in the world of clocks
the maker
the fixer
the eternal spring
that bounces back
and shields the many rocks of alarm

oh but digital time
the great expanse of the universe
the never returning to the point of origin
digital time that accumulates without God
just a system amok
in the dark night of our souls

is the multiverse
asymmetrical
the leap of time
of consciousness
into oblivion
entropy
forever
expanding
but once

why

I hold onto my clock
a teddy bear
a pillow
a thing so human
and necessary
to make sense of the world
a clock
and the God who made it

Dan Cuddy is currently an editor of the Loch Raven Review. In the past he was a contributing editor of the Maryland Poetry Review and Lite: Baltimore’s Literary Newspaper. He has had a book of poetry published, Handprint on the Window in 2003. Recently he has had poems published in Madness Muse Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, the Rats’s Ass Review, Roanoke Review, , Synchronized Chaos, Fixator Press, Beatnik Cowboy, Gargoyle, The Chamber Magazine and Witcraft.

Thich Nhat Hanh 

As my wife removed a tick from the inside of my wrist, 
I joked that I’d name my brand of deep woods, bug dope
Tick Not On for the monk I’ve read often with the hope
of becoming a more settled person. He doesn’t insist,
but in an understated way suggests that trying to resist
the world’s pain is impossible—not effective strategy.
I like the idea that sitting quietly could itself be remedy,
nothing more being needed to transform fear 
into curiosity. Marriage and work have worked for me,
helping me expand my constricted sphere 
of comfort slowly. It’s taken decades. No quick awakening 
but shifts by small degree in modus operandi 
from shirking to deliberate activity. A mantra I still enlist—
get over yourself—is what reality asks of everything,
work that in the end none of us gets out of doing.



Charles Weld’s poems have been collected in two chapbooks, Country I Would Settle In (Pudding House, 2004) and Who Cooks For You? (Kattywompus, 2012.) A full-length collection, Seringo, was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. A retired administrator for an agency serving youth with mental health challenges, Charles Weld lives in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

Angels and Scars; Scars or Angels

In a parallel existence, we are pure-white 
beings, flying abreast, tips of wings 
touching-not-touching.

Midflight, I glimpse your scar;
the sweet pink, the stitched 
skin that must have settled by now. 

And we glide over 
valleys and crags, meadows 
carpeted green, dotted with crisp 
lakes and red-roofed farms.

I have my scars too — carried 
in the pocket of my breast 
bone; kept warm under the feathers.

Riding a gale, or the golden breeze, 
heading onward — always onward — we 
are angels, nonetheless. Wounds aside. 
No: angels for our scars.

Spreading wide wings, we swoop 
down for the night; a hidden branch to nestle
close, head against a shoulder. 
The air soon softens into rhythmic tunes:
serenading crickets, courting bullfrogs, 
the occasional hoot of an owl.

And we fall asleep to the music. 

Rinat Harel holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Exeter, England. Her writing has been published in various literary magazines and received several awards. She currently works on a poetry collection titled Poems from the Boidem.

Ode to the Tree across the Street

It locks itself in my eyes
as I sit at the kitchen table.
Branches stretch with the strength
a human strives for. The tree
lets the elements take care
of its well being. It follows
by instinct the Tao which I try
to convince myself to accept--
learn from the tree to bend
with the intrusive changes of wind
and stand straight on a calm day.

I smile to see the branches joining  
with those of another tree over the fence
and want to believe they are protecting
each other. They become one
under their whelming summer green
surpassing the roofs of the houses
that disappear beneath them.

I smile as my arms, like the limbs
of the tree, lock with another’s
under the canopy of our faith in each other.

Janet Krauss, after retirement from teaching 39 years of English at Fairfield University, continues to mentor students,  lead a poetry discussion at the Wilton Library, participate in a CT. Poetry Society Workshop, and one other plus two poetry groups. She co-leads the Poetry Program of the Black Rock Art Guild. She has two books of poetry: Borrowed Scenery (Yuganta Press) and Through the Trees of Autumn (Spartina Press).  Many of her poems have been published in Amethyst Review, and her haiku in Cold Moon Journal.

Three’s a Minyan

This building, our sanctuary, has seen better days.
Nights, too, sure enough. 

The black and white tiles are worn into almost-ash.
Where did I once hear that marble is forever?

The floor is buckling.
The paint is cracking overhead.

Its flakes drift without hurry onto the grand chandelier,
confetti among crystals.

Here I was called into a manhood
I resisted, kicking and screaming

until my legs ached and my voice grew hoarse.
A manhood I still haven’t found.

Here was the kiddush for the miracle of Malkah, 
whose parents had so long hoped to welcome.

Outside, the needles litter the sidewalk.
The dealers and their customers negotiate in lethal embrace.

Some step away and rest on our benches.
Who would we be if we evicted them?

Their pleas—please—
mingle with our prayers.

Even the dollar store may soon be closing.
Such brazen theft, they say. Not even bothering to pilfer.

And still the nectar of the cantor’s voice washes over me,
causing me to weep if I think about it

as he calls out the High Holiday liturgy
“Hineni he-oni ….”/Here I am, impoverished … 

In the ritual bath of that voice,
I am forgiven. Patched into crazy quilt.

And still we three assemble to honor what was
and what still is.

We see to it that the electric candles on each of the bimah’s four posts
glow beneath their glass globes. 

We ensure the suaveness of the prayerbook bindings.
We gather the page shards for burial.

And we gather to read the weekly Torah portion.
Instead of a single reader, we three take turns.

We will never surrender our Torah scrolls.
See their unstolen finials sparkle in this incandescent gloom.

We understand Jacob’s devotion,
his love. We will wait, too.

We remember when one hundred was not unusual. 
We remember when we hoped for ten.

Now we are content with, grateful for, three.
We mark the passage of days. And yes, again, the nights.

We stick with the texts, the songs.
The reminiscences on more recency/decency are in our blood,

our bones.
We won’t rehash them.

Who are we?
We are three of fluidity tending a sliver of holiness.

We are three who shall not be moved.
We will stay until we are two or one.

Until our days are done.
Only let us not dwell there. But only here.

Though we are not ten,
we are still three.

We are neither patriarchs nor matriarchs.
We are without child. But children nonetheless.

Our prayers on that front were not answered.
That’s sometimes how it is with prayers.

This building, our sanctuary, your sanctuary, sways amid the ruins.
We are the caretakers of this corner of supplication.

Come to us, child. You are welcome here.
Our melody flits and darts, gathers force as it rises,

east, and elsewhere,
somehow finding just the right key to open the gates of heaven.

Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is a poet, writer, and translator of Yiddish literature. He is the author of two books of fiction and six volumes of poetry, including A Mouse Among Tottering Skyscrapers: Selected Yiddish Poems (2017). His recent translations from the Yiddish include Dineh: An Autobiographical Novel (2022) by Ida Maze and Blessed Hands: Stories (2023) by Frume Halpern. Please visit his website.

Woolly Bear

Among the leaves flailed down by fall rain,
we find a woolly bear caterpillar.
How liquid its black eyes shine!  I pleasure
at its slight tickle curling on my palm,
carry it to a safer thicket.
Littlest bear, with luck you’ll make a lovely
Isabella tiger moth on the other
side of this winter we both feel coming.

How does your body know the changes
that will unlock your pale orange wings
in some future sun past loss and cold?
As a boy I loved you for yourself
long before any knowledge of what you
might be, as we all have hoped to be loved.

Thomas R. Smith is a poet, editor, essayist and teacher living in western Wisconsin.  His most recent books are Medicine Year (poetry) and Poetry on the Side of Nature: Writing the Nature Poem as an Act of Survival (prose).  His poems and essays can be found at www.thomasrsmithpoet.com.