Review: Jody L. Collins Mining the Bright Birds: Poems of Longing for Home.
/
In Mining the Bright Birds: Poems of Longing for Home, Jody L. Collins invites the reader into a moment, a minute of quotidian life, to witness. These poems reflect both in outward revelation of God’s glory in creation but also inward, the secret space within a heart attuned to His love.
In “Garden Prep” Collins imagines worms deep within the earth, displacing “obstacles one gulp at a time.” The poem becomes a quiet meditation on Memento Mori, the eventuality but also hope in death, “an unfurling/ palette of creation now hidden”
In “Stirring Petitions” making buttermilk pancakes becomes prayer “for songs will not come/ from your own heart today.” A bowl, a griddle, a stove and a kitchen become “an altar on the other side of the world.”
Mining the Bright Birds is a song for those mothers and grandmothers who make a home for those around them. We know not the stirrings of their inner lives, so rich and deep, carrying us along in their prayers.