The Miracle of Morning

“The Miracle of Morning” presents a straightforward message of hope and unification. The poem advocates for hope and unification by lacing everyday images together with stanzas that are full of advice. The poem relies on commonly held values and metaphorical language related to light and warmth. The poem presents its message in as simple and accessible a way as possible so that the reader’s focus is not on the poem’s artistic merit but on its societal message. In pursuit of this goal, the poem employs a standard rhyme scheme and everyday language and syntax. As a result, “The Miracle of Morning’ is an highly accessible poem that avoids apportioning blame. The poem does not wish to cast aspersions on anyone for the current state of the world nor does it take a didactic tone; instead, the poem focuses on the positive aspects of life and community-building values like togetherness and love.

Gorman opens the poem with an image that contrasts expectation with reality. The speaker of the poem expects to wake to a cloudy sky, but instead, they wake to warmth and beauty. The first stanza is in the first person, which emphasizes the personal emotions that characterize the tone of the poem; even though the poem is full of hope, the speaker is not immune to the suffering the world is experiencing at the time of the poem’s composition.

The speaker opens the poem by showing that they feel the pain everyone else feels; they follow this display of empathy with a description of what they see in the community around them. The images of the community they choose in the second stanza are lively and full of interaction, which have the effect of mitigating the pain they mention at the start of the poem. The interactions between a father and a baby, a girl and a dog, and a grandma with a young neighbor all universalize the potential for everyone in pain to access some relief and hope.

The depiction of social interaction between people here is important because Gorman wrote the poem during the Covid-19 pandemic when lockdowns were sweeping the nation. At this time, many people felt isolated from one another as social distancing as a way to minimize risk became the standard. To Gorman, these small moments of social interaction are crucial if society is to experience warmth. Gorman does not focus on the cold isolation of the pandemic; she focuses on the strength of human decency to transcend the pandemic’s divisive qualities.

The third stanza shifts to the third person plural as Gorman attempts to bring all people together into her vision of a warm world. The tone of the poem also shifts from observational to instructional. The speaker asks if readers will come together and uses a simile to challenge readers to see the positive side of the current situation: “Like light, we can’t break even when we bend” (Lines 13-14). The speaker intends to inspire readers with their confidence in the resilience of individuals, and the use of the third person plural depersonalizes the voice, making this rhetorical appeal feel genuine.

Stanzas five through seven build on both the rhetorical question of the third stanza and the simile in stanzas three and four. In stanza five, the speaker is firm in their belief that “​​we will defeat both despair and disease” (Line 15), and they list the heroes of the pandemic whom they believe are the people who can defeat despair and disease. The speaker’s list of heroes is comprehensive, implying that everyone has potentially heroic qualities. Almost everyone in America has some connection with at least one of the groups they mention, conveying the notion that, through this crisis, society stands together.

Stanza six returns to the image of people as a source of light. Earlier in the poem, the speaker asserts that humans are like light because we cannot break; here, they deepen the comparison by saying that our light burns brightest in the darkness. The image here conveys a sense of resilience. Gorman contrasts light to darkness to set up other juxtapositions throughout the stanza: love through loss, clarity through chaos, and solidarity through suffering. These examples of perseverance and resilience remind readers of their own strength and resilience in the face of a negative situation.

Stanza seven echoes stanza six, again focusing on the positives in a negative situation through the implementation of an optimistic tone. Here, Gorman again uses contrast to emphasize through her speaker how gratitude comes from grief, which enables people find hope when all seems lost. Despite the hardship, pain provides society with a sense of purpose.

Gorman ends the poem with an eye to the future, asserting that the suffering we have faced will make us better people. The final stanza is unabashedly hopeful. Gorman’s language here is forceful and determined revealing no doubt in her optimistic vision for the future: “When this ends, we’ll smile sweetly, finally seeing / In testing times, we became the best of beings” (Lines 34-35). Gorman believes in the kindness and resilience she has observed, and this hopeful, purposeful vision of a brighter future replaces the darker thoughts at the beginning of the poem, indicating the potential of all of us to change with the dawn of a new day.