World of Made and Unmade

Jane Mead's fifth collection candidly and openly explores the long process that is death. These resonant poems discover what it means to live, die, and come home again. We're drawn in by sorrow and grief, but also the joys of celebrating a long life and how simple it is to find laughter and light in the quietest and darkest of moments.

This year I have disappeared
from the harvest routine—

the pickers throwing their trays
under the vines, grape hooks
flying, the heavy bunches flying—

pickers running to the running tractors
with trays held high above their heads
and the arc of dark fruit

falling heavily into the half-ton bins.

The hornets swarming in the diesel-filled air.