This is a wonderful collection of poetry, it really does capture the feeling of longing in a beautiful and thought-provoking way.

I have to admit to having a favourite poem – Autumn Leaf. This poem just captured so much of how I’m feeling at the moment, not just as we approach the end of summer and the change of season into autumn but the many changes in my own life that I’m having to come to terms with. I just felt a feeling of not being alone in my struggles wash over me on reading these lines:

How long I may travel

I shall not know

Until I begin to sink;

The source and the sea,

They are still certain,

But the journey,

As you know, is not.

I also took a lot from Mind Mountains for similar reasons to Autumn Leaf. Just the much needed reminder that however much my own life contains me, there is so much more beyond the garden fence than my own thoughts.

Spring is…? was also a lovely poem, one that made me smile. I loved the line ‘It changes the rules and snows in May’ because that is just so much of how life is. Unpredictable and yet somehow still beautiful.

And of course I adored Urban Springtime as it gave insight into the title for this collection. Accidental emeralds is such a lovely title and to know where it comes from is a much-needed reminder that there is beauty even in things that are broken. This poem in particular will stay with me, it’s something to cling to.

Overall the collection can be enjoyed at face value as a group of poems about the changing seasons, but deeper than that is the underlying reminder that things change, things break, things pull you in different directions but there is still something beautiful in all of it if we just sit a while and take it all in.

A 10/10 star read.