Amethyst Review

The Journey Inwards

The sculptor’s rock looms in the white studio light.

She knows what to do.
The form has long been in her
echoing her need to express.

The stone’s heart is resistant,
resentful maybe.

It yearns for its ancient place,
thrown up in the seethe that formed the planet,
cooled and split by the seismic rolling of the oceans.
Then frozen to its core.

It has no fear.
Integrated, complete:
it views the puny soul that knows so little,
as she readies on a ladder with hammer and chisel to scribble on its surface.

The granite boulder squats,
menacing,
very much alert.

Alive
and waiting.


Viv Longley has been writing for her own pleasure since she was a child. Later in life she undertook an MA in Creative Writing at The Open University, specialising in poetry. As well as having one collection (Tally Sheet, Currock Press, 2021) she is undertaking a number of collaborative publications, notably, Daughters of Thyme. She is also preparing a second collection of her own and a number of essays – the latter to be called I am in a Hurry. ‘Now nearing my 80’s, you just never know how much time you have left!’

The Meaning of Life is to See								



So said Hui-Neng
in the seventh century.

And what are we to contemplate
with the other-worldly third eye
we are urged to open wide?

Shall we regard
the dandelion
defying Round-Up and rusted blade
thrusting forth its flower, yellow
against fissured cement,
the decaying fence,
sun-powered, indomitable?

Shall we keep watch
for constellations, the Southern Cross 
forming, in its ordered, linear course,
a celestial four-way stop?

And what of the cold-stunned carp
suspended below the thin, cracked ice
of a backyard pond,
the sheen of scales weak
as winter dawn, but tomorrow,
when it’s warmer,
a brighter orange?

Shall we notice
how the eyes of a newborn
mirror those of her great-grandmother?
Behind the same soft, misted veils,
do they glimpse
forgotten realms?

What, with our awakened vision
should we commit to memory?

Ten thousand things, said Neng,
but especially
leaves,
the progeny of trees,
wheeling at the whim of light,
greening and browning and greening again,
now brittle and broken,
then whole and succulent.					

Since 2019, Claire Massey has been a selection editor for the biennial print journal, The Emerald Coast Review. She is poetry editor for The Pen Woman magazine. Her work appears in numerous journals of the literary arts, including POEM, Snapdragon Journal of Art and Healing, Panoply, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Avalon Literary Review, Literally Stories, and The Listening Anthology. Recently nominated for a 2023 Pushcart Prize, her work has twice won awards from the National Soul-Making Keats Competition, and was longlisted for a 2023 Letter Review prize. Read more of her aesthetic in her debut collection, Driver Side Window: Poems & Prose. 

Image by Luke Wallin, author, visual artist and professor emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, USA.

Semi-solid Light


We are both prayerful.

She, with the commanding worship of her evensong,
and I, with Isha’s joyful submission,
“Bismillah-ir-Rahman-ir-Rahim.”

Both beckoning, sightless, in Owl
and Arabic, to mysteries
beyond understanding.

Like this belligerent mist, toiling to drown
even the glow of the street lamp.
Embroiling it within an unfolding
of semi-solid light.

A mischievous haze
dazzling, rising, lightly blazing,
to swirl over stoops, and under eaves.

Ponderously striving to deny
the very forms of her forest, our heavens,
and these man-made structures.

But it too, eventually,
rises from prayer,
and submits with grace, to Grace.

And with new clarity, our vision
of a darkly clouded sky, returns,
crowded, with gratitude.

Chris Wardle (Hamza) works at being happy and grateful, while writing with an eye for wonder, a taste for questions, and a sense of proximity to the Sacred. A relative newcomer to sharing his poetry, he has been published in: Blue Minaret, Pandemonium (2022); and Green Ink Poetry (2023).

God considers Her creation 


Well before dawn I sprinkled sunflower hearts 
across the frosted planks of the decking
for the sparrows and blackbirds and dunnocks
right next to the hedge they hang out in.
They haven’t been near the place since.
Is it because I’m here, watching? Instead,
they flit, and cling to shining twigs, and preen.
The winter sunrise, streaming from behind,
illuminates their feathers when they fly.
Fluttering light surrounds each silhouette:
hard-edged bodies with translucent wings.

Perhaps they’re not hungry. Perhaps hunger 
means less to them than preening in the sun.
What more can I do? Why don’t they come?

Helen Evans facilitates Inner Room, a pioneer lay ministry that creates space for people to be creative, and is piloting a new project, Poems for the Path Ahead, which in 2023 included poetry workshops held in a cathedral in England and in a consecrated cave in Scotland. Her debut pamphlet, Only by Flying, was published by HappenStance Press. Her poems have appeared in The Rialto, The North, Magma, Wild Court, The Friday Poem and Ink, Sweat & Tears. ‘That Angel Hovering’ was a joint winner of the Manchester Cathedral 600 Poetry Competition. She has a master’s degree with distinction in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews. www.helenevans.co.uk

Psyanka


The Ukrainian tradition of intricately patterned, multi-colored eggs is older than Christianity.  Originally a spring ritual in honor of the sun god Dazboh, when Ukraine accepted Christianity in 988, the custom was adapted as an Easter ritual.  Under Soviet rule, in the twentieth century, the custom was banned.  Around the world the custom was kept alive by the Ukranian diaspora and has once again been revived in the homeland.  Pysanka refers to one decorated egg; the plural is pysanky.     

Image credit: Lubap, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons


All year they gather materials for the dyes:
flowers of woadwaxen for yellow, 
onion skins for gold. 
Crimson is derived from logwood 
and the crushed bodies of conchineal beetles; 
dark green and violet from the husks of sunflower seeds; 
black from walnut husks. 
Berries, bark, madder root, cow urine, sprouts—
all gathered to yield the richly colored dyes.  

After Yordan on January 19  
(Epiphany by the Julian calendar),
they begin to set aside eggs.
The eggs must be fertilized   
and only the smoothest, 
most symmetrical, and lightest 
in color are kept.   

When Lent arrives, 
it is time to begin the pysanky. 
Grandmothers, mothers, daughters 
work at night in secret,  
using family dye recipes
and design patterns 
passed down for generations. 

The designs are written (not drawn) on the eggs
in hot beeswax with a pysachok (stylus).
After each inscription, the egg is dyed,
working from light to dark:
yellow to orange to red to purple, brown, black.
Always light to dark. 
Alum helps the natural dyes adhere to the eggshells. 
After the final dye, the eggs are warmed
and the wax is wiped off with a cloth. 

A large family might make sixty eggs each year.   
On Easter Sunday, they are brought to church 
to be blessed by the priest. 

And then they are given away; 
lighter colors to children, darker colors to elders.  
Everyone receives an egg. 


     			
			A List in Celebration of the Giving of Pysanky


1 or 2 to the priest, who has blessed the eggs, who brings news of the Risen Savior
3 or 4 to the cemetery, in honor of those who have gone to their Maker
10 to 20 to the children and grandchildren; each child gets an egg
10 or 12 to unmarried girls, who give them to single men 
3 or 4 are set aside to be placed in coffins of persons who might die in the next year
3 or 4 are kept in the home—in the cupboard, on the windowsill, on the mantel 
		to protect the home from fire, storms, lightning
3 or 4 are placed in the mangers of cows for plentiful milk
3 or 4 placed in the mangers of sheep for safe lambing 
1 beneath the beehive to bless the honey and the bees
1 for each grazing animal sent to pasture in the spring 
1 in each hen’s nest for good egg laying  
Today it is Easter.  Everyone receives an egg. 

Rita Moe’s poetry has appeared in Water~Stone, Poet Lore, Mad Swirl, Slipstream, and other literary journals. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Sins & Disciplines and Findley Place; A Street, a Ballpark, a Neighborhood.  She has two grown sons and lives with her husband in Roseville, Minnesota.  

Medinat Habu, outside Luxor, Egypt

This, a temple at the site of the origin of creation, a primordial swamp, from which the god Amun rose. Known as the god of deities, he later merged with the sun god, Ra. 


Before, before, before humans broke
through the slime, before pharaohs
were formed, before temples built
for belief were set, the great god 
Amun appeared on this spot, mark
it now. Feel how energy rises 
from your soles, which is why 
stones are stacked in stately ways, 
why columns once held roofs,  
led paths into mystery,
because what can’t be spoken, 
can be prayer nonetheless. 

Kathleen Calby lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains and hosts writer events for the North Carolina Writers Network. Her work appears in San Pedro River Review, New Plains Review and The Orchards Poetry Journal. Named a 2022 Rash Award Poetry Finalist, Kathleen published Flirting with Owls (Kelsay Books) in 2023. Her Sufi background and other mystical associations contributed to a recent full-length manuscript she is completing about ancient and contemporary Egypt and the Pharaonic Era landmarks she was privileged to experience. Back home, Kathleen enjoys fried chicken and biscuits a bit too much and long, strenuous walks not enough.

Markings

What markings, then, on the path have I left?
What inkling prints or spoor displayed
for others to follow – that tireless rabble
of curious scientists, disciples,
and ankle-sniffing catchers of prey, adopting
those difficult ways and defiles I have trod.

I wish and need to know and so, retreating
from the storm-lashed summit I almost reached,
through filth and floods obscuring tracks,
I find one such and bind and shake him
till his teeth rattle, demanding, who are you?
I am you, says he.

I am the one you dropped, my friend,
as excess baggage long ago. And the others?
Stopping also, they have strayed to fresh obsessions.
It is only you and me remaining.
Return and hold to your ascension
and I shall write about your subtle signs.

Clive Donovan is the author of two poetry collections, The Taste of Glass [Cinnamon Press 2021] and Wound Up With Love [Lapwing 2022] and is published in a wide variety of magazines including Acumen, Agenda, Amethyst Review, Crannog, Popshot, Prole and Stand. He lives in Totnes, Devon, UK. He was a Pushcart and Forward Prize nominee for 2022’s best individual poems. 

defiles, n. a steep-sided narrow gorge or passage

Eastertide 


The latest funeral has come and gone—
Now all remaining mourners must move on.

Though tired, we choose to walk, to look around—
And find a tiny pine in just-turned ground.

We stop to stare at cuteness so overt—
With long-leaf needles like a hula skirt.

Its still-straight trunk tops out in triple shoots—
Perhaps two feet above its buried roots.

Such takes the place of what expired last year—
An elder specimen removed from here.

Encouragement can come from some new tree—
Thanks be to God for serendipity.



Jane Blanchard lives and writes in Georgia (USA). Her poetry has recently appeared in Lighten Up Online, Molecule, and Panorama. Her latest collection is Metes and Bounds (Kelsay Books, 2023).

Mayday


Mooinjer veggey are well enough like 
	people we can see, mostly benevolent 
even if some prey on the weak especially 
	on Oie Voaldyn when the bridge across 
to summer is unguarded. Homes though are
	defended by croshyn and sumarkyn  
hanging above the threshold and on back doors. 

	Fire is the key, not just to block bad luck 
but stop themselves from stealing the good. 
	If you have land, then find a bush 
and burn the buitçh hidden in gorse, those brown
	-dead sprigs alongside sap-filled spines 
in yellow bloom. No sacrifice is visible 
	though spirits cackle in the flames. 
Know you’ll be unforgetting an ancient tradition 
	heeding warnings from somewhere else. 

mooinjer veggey  faeries, literally ‘little people’  /  Oie Voaldyn  May Day Eve  /  croshyn  crosses  /  sumarkyn  primroses  /  themselves  faeries  /  buitçh  witch  / ‘burn the buitçh’   tradition to expel evil spirits

Simon Maddrell writes as a queer Manx man, thriving with HIV in Brighton & Hove. Since 2019, over a hundred of his poems have appeared in numerous publications including Acumen, AMBIT, Butcher’s Dog, Poetry Wales, Propel, Stand, The Gay & Lesbian Review, The Moth, The Rialto, Under the Radar. In 2020, Simon’s debut chapbook, Throatbone, was published by UnCollected Press, and Queerfella jointly-won The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition. In 2023, The Whole Island and Isle of Sin, were both Poetry Book Society Selections. a finger in derek jarman’s mouth marks 30 years after Jarman’s death (Polari Press, Feb. 2024).

I am the Sky
 
You are the sky. Everything else – it's just the weather.
—Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart
 
If I am the sky,
the lightning bolts
and tornadoes
of my mind
cannot burn me
or turn me
upside down.
 
If I am the sky,
I do not resist
the wildfires,
hurricanes,
or fog in
my brain.
 
If I am the sky,
I allow
pillowy clouds,
rainstorms,
and stars
 
to rise,
to move,
 
to say
goodbye.

Claire Coenen is a writer and social worker living in Nashville, TN, where she teaches expressive writing. Her debut collection, The Beautiful Keeps Breathing, is forthcoming with Kelsay Books in spring 2025.