By S.M. Flaherty Jones

I follow the oat trail made by their
breakfast cereal, path of my children,
path of my vacuum, all the same --
and I stand, today, faced with the grains

and a most ordinary love impacting
my heart with little wing-beats, enough
to make blood flow, no more, no less,
unwordable, I guess, in the sense of

entirely unremarkable. I know this story.
It would be disingenuous of me to say
now, today, I do not know why I am here.
Morning comes. The children rise, and later,

more crumbs fall from the folds
in the clothes as I shake them into the wash,
process of transformation amid soap
and the wringer, dryer set at a great heat.

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"Heart of Morning" is written as a response to Robert Penn Warren's “Heart of Autumn.”

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