Jay Heins’ debut poetry collection, Book of Hours, gently asks you to consider both small miracles and large tragedies. Inspired by medieval Christian illuminated manuscripts, Heins adapts this practice of pairing poetry with visual art into a nature-based secular kind of worship. These unconventional prayers are a devotional practice of gratitude juxtaposed with grief, meditations on how death informs life.

Consider the lilac bushes taking over the cemetery. The “hills /that unzipped green /only yesterday” set against the doors of the chemo ward. Heins’ poetry sketches the beauty and pain when “time removes the guardrails”. Always returning to nature for solace, with a focus on the cyclical, Book of Hours reminds us that “time stops; yet / I am moving / and the river flows”.