This Ground Beneath Our Feet

These spirited poems travel the globe before landing in the American Midwest.

Gathered from nearly 20 years of writing, the poems in This Ground Beneath Our Feet sail from the Atlantic crossings of her ancestors to the forests of New England, to the Mississippi River Valley, to the world contained within a neighborhood backyard. Over and over, through offers of food and a listening ear, connections form across distances. Strangers find common ground. These poems capture scenes with lyrical precision: Emily Dickinson shares homemade cake; a dawn house fire sends neighbors tapping at the window for help; a family gathers for a loved one's final hours. In other snapshots from the collection, a stranger guides the lost poet through the streets of Togo's capital city. These are poems that delight in the natural world, even in wildflowers tucked next to buildings. Written with the intimacy of Bright's first collection, Fierce Delight: Poems of Early Motherhood, these poems ask, "What seeds are we planting for the future?"