A Harvest of Days by Alex Missall

In A Harvest of Days, poet Alex Missall invites readers into a meditative exploration of existence where the boundaries between inner and outer worlds dissolve, through vivid encounters with the natural landscape, forest trails, shifting rivers, and quiet campsites. Missall charts a path toward understanding loss, transformation, and the redemptive power of presence.

Structured in four movements (Anamnesis, Imago, Scintilla, and Harvest), this collection traces a speaker navigating personal upheaval: a mother’s illness, familial fractures, and the disorienting aftermath of institutionalization. Yet these poems refuse despair. Instead, they find solace in the patient rhythms of the earth, fallen leaves, migratory birds, the pendulum swing of seasons, and in the small, luminous moments that punctuate daily life.

Missall’s voice is both philosophical and deeply grounded, drawing on influences from Eastern philosophy to modernist precision. Whether observing deer at twilight, sitting beside a failing campfire, or walking rain-soaked trails with family, the poems in A Harvest of Days offer readers a space to pause, reflect, and rediscover beauty in the flux of time.

Perfect for readers of Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, and contemporary nature writing, A Harvest of Days is a testament to the healing power of attention and the quiet wisdom found in returning, again and again, to the world around us.

–Jennifer Jennings, The Author’s ARC Squad