The poems gathered for In the Willing Dirtreflect a recent six-year period, during which the poet, Jade Bradbury, faced serious health challenges and also explored through the writing of these poems the depth of her passion for life and the natural world. The poems are not in pursuit of answers to questions about why one thing or another besets us, but rather in search of what matters, what is true, no matter what. The poet knows she must make peace with various coordinates that inform and connect her understanding of the cosmos. She notes that weare Nature, that we're the earthquakes, the love and the fear, the violence and stillness; drought and plenty, the darkness and light, creation and destruction that fuels the carbon cycle from which all matter flows. More often than not, she balances the gravitas of those observations with subtle humor and a voice that both chides and forgives. She has said that her poems are prayers for the willingness of dirt to succor and sustain us.