- Can you list the miracles in your life?
- What to you is miraculous?
The Heart of Us All
With the radio and the television off all morning
and the newspaper folded in its chair
I leave the laptop alone
and set my phone on mute
I just want to hear bird-chatter in the air
faint shouts of children in a distant schoolyard
hens across the road happy for all the bugs they find
ducks gliding in and turning raucous on the pond
All those rednecks I know start to become people again
next to the soft-hearted liberals who find room
for genders of all kinds declaring themselves
I just try to take our common breath into my nostrils
Out of the north a heavy cold rolls in that gives me pause
Did I check my roof for leaks ‒ or my identity for flaws?
My telltale tracks may freeze in the mud tonight
or snow may dress them in a semblance of innocence
Cut-off as we are from each other
I want to stay open to our mother
to feel the hum of her weather within me
as it comes winding through the heart of us all
‒ Eugene Marckx