“In a steady, approachable voice, Ellen Gerneaux Woods explores both the tenderness and tension woven into the mother/daughter bond.  She roots her poems in the natural world, beginning this graceful collection with primordial jellyfish and ending with a backyard’s damp grass. In the quietly profound poems of The Watchful Heart Recedes, Ellen Gerneaux Woods engages with the beauty and wisdom of our earth and our hearts.” –Kathleen McClung, author of A Juror Must Fold in on Herself, and Temporary Kin.