FEATURED: Wayfinding in Spring and Other Poems

by Jody Collins

WAYFINDING IN SPRING

Does mud speak?

Voice the needed signs

To point me home with 

Pilgrim prints in this

Cracked earth at my feet?

Light illuminates shallow bowls

Of dirt traces groundward. 

I glimpse shadows in earthscape,

Craters of soil a bas relief, stark

Contrast to the map my soles

Touch as my soul ambles onward.

HEART TRANSPLANT

Ezekiel 26:26-27

The need is ours-an urgent newness required

to resuscitate limbs, extremities, the sullen mind.

Without so much as a gown, mask or hospital

room, a divine hand reaches down to remove

that-which-is-dead, this stony, unfeeling organ,

and replaces it with muscle, pumping tissue

that circulates scarlet choice and change

while Spirit breath offers rebirth to this 

waiting receptacle of life.

JODY COLLINS

Jody Collins’ newest book is Mining the Bright Birds: Poems of Longing for Home (Wipf & Stock, 2023). She also wrote and published Hearts on Pilgrimage: Poems and Prayers in 2021. Her first essays and letters appeared in newspapers in the late 80’s but after raising kids and going to school, she found the world of online writing where she’s been since 2012. 

When not visiting grandkids or writing at her desk, she enjoys watching birds from the back deck and messing about in her Seattleland garden. You can find more of her work at her website and on her Substack, Poetry & Made Things.