THERE WILL BE SPRING
By Marc Yacht
Cruel and cold are the winter months
Living beings pursue the warmth
Many just huddle together
To overcome frigid weather.
Lakes, ponds, and rivers, ice caked, still
Empty trees shake, bend, and shiver
Dry chilled air and shadows prevail
Rare warm sun may offer relief.
Freezing days and nights pass slowly
Life itself does move at half-pace
Comfortable shelter allows safety
Smart to bed down, await sunshine.
The storms will cede to better clime
Time will only proceed forward
The clouds and shadows disappear
There will be Spring, there always is.
Dr. Marc J. Yacht, MD, MPH is a retired medical doctor. He spent several years in private family practice and then joined the Florida Department of Health. Currently, his interests are music, poetry writing, and submitting OP-EDS relating to current national issues. He and his wife are both retired. Their three children are married. He and his wife currently reside in Hudson, Florida. Email: Mjyacht58@gmail.com
The Felt Bell
By Malachi Sinlao
Inside me is a little bell,
A wonderful, spry, and colorful bell,
Filled with wonderful stories to tell,
Deep within my heart, this little bell dwells.
Yet sounds fail to escape from my little bell,
For no noise can be heard from a bell made of felt,
Its casting is crocheted as a soft open shell,
With a clapper whose clanging is woefully quelled.
Dare I embrace the silence of my little felt bell?
Even as its vibrations tip-toes through my cells?
No! Its song must be heard from the Heavens to Hell!
But for music so hidden, how can it be dealt?
I will write of the wisdom of my little felt bell!
And whenever it rings I will rise up and yell:
“Come listen to my song!” and I’ll sing it myself,
Because one day it will ring louder,
as my confidence swells.
Malachi Sinlao is a Filipino-American author and poet from St. Petersburg, Florida. His poems have been previously featured in the Summer 2025 and Winter 2025 issues of St. Pete’s Neptune Magazine and the January/February 2026 issue of The Artisan. You can find more poems on his Instagram @malachi_sinlao and short stories at malachisinlao.substack.com.
Mosaic Poem
By Janet Blair
Write it like the dreams you try to lasso, those
fragmented glimpses floating by too hastily to absorb.
Catalog them like a set of sensory index cards.
A vintage key carried down long and sleepy hallways,
opening each storied door, in turn.
The smell of new skin as you rocked your daughter,
breathing in her separate self the first time.
That hair your son had at age four, blond and
silky soft against your hands.
The worry tree you always pictured as a weeping willow
bowing prayerfully over Crescent Lake.
Your mother’s long fingers that typed 75wpm, wrote shorthand,
and wrapped around cups of steaming black coffee but trembled toward the end.
The live oak planted by the playground, circled with stones and tattooed
onto skin as rooted remembrances.
That helicopter ride you took a few years ago
its whirling rotor blades chopping up the air
as it swooped you up over a city surrounded by cerulean blue.
You looking down at the fragile architecture of it all
just before lifting into another morning.
Janet Blair lived in Trinidad, Germany, Ecuador and Guam along with several states across the U.S. before finding her home in the city of St Pete almost three decades ago. Currently, Janet holds a position as a policy analyst for the State of Florida and spends her weekends writing poetry. Her most recent and upcoming work can be found in The Orchards Poetry Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal, New Verse News, The Florida Bards Anthology and The Eckerd Review.
