Reflections: Earth, Heart, Light, Dark is a mother-daughter collaboration that explores the intertwined themes of Earth, Heart, Light, and Dark through poetry. The book flows like a seasonal cycle, beginning with poems rooted in nature, moving through love and memory, then toward hope and illumination, and finally into grief, loss, and shadows. Each section feels distinct, yet they all circle back to a shared sense of searching for meaning in both beauty and pain.

Poems like Transition pulled me in with their intimacy, especially the image of a mother’s hands rebuilding a new world after a storm. It felt deeply personal but also universal, the kind of moment that made me stop and think about my own family. I’ll admit, Grandmama caught me off guard with its questions, “What thoughts did you have? Did you think them deserving?” and left me feeling both unsettled and comforted at the same time. That’s what I liked most, the poems didn’t tie everything up neatly. They lingered.

From Ash to Light carried a strong sense of resilience, and I couldn’t help but feel buoyed by its journey from despair to joy. It had this rhythm of stumbling and rising that felt human and raw. On the other hand, Dawn of Forty-Nine leaned more toward classic imagery, almost old-fashioned in its rhymes, which at first jarred me but eventually worked because it added texture to the collection. I found myself rereading those lines about waterfalls and winds, almost like I was letting the words wash over me instead of trying to decode them.

Then there’s the “Dark” section. This is where the book hit hardest for me. You Left Me was plainspoken, almost brutally so, and that stripped-down honesty made it sting. The Waves had this hypnotic pull with its repetition, “Rising above, wave after wave,” that felt like drowning in grief and memory. I could feel the authors letting themselves go to heavier places, and I appreciated that they didn’t shy away. It made the hopeful poems earlier in the book feel more earned, less naïve.

Reflections: Earth, Heart, Light, Dark is for readers who like their poetry to sit somewhere between personal diary and universal myth. It’s not heavy with academic wordplay, but it’s not fluff either. If you enjoy quiet evenings with a book that makes you pause, maybe even tear up, this one is a must-read. Personally, I closed it feeling like I had sat down with two voices who weren’t afraid to be vulnerable, and that’s something I’ll always admire in poetry.

Pages: 38 | ASIN : B0FFNGQ15P