I roused myself from the half dream gibberish,
out of the hammock before I knew I was awake,
hammock put away before I had decided
that I was done resting
As I was just lying down,
I had been thinking,
What would it mean to live every moment
as if I might wake up at any time?
As if the whole dream could fall away
just like that –
What would I want to be noticing?
©Wendy Mulhern
June 18, 2020
However many places
I have been right,
however many operations
I’ve worked correctly,
one thing that I don’t get
will foil the whole result,
and for all my careful efforts
I’ll have nothing
If, then, just now,
I find an error –
could be one of many
or the only one –
Shall I not say, Rejoice with me!
I’ve found my lost sheep
and am carrying it home.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 16, 2020
The world convulses.
This isn’t the first time a great idea
has lit up the people,
isn’t the first time a simple truth
has sat with dawn-fresh clarity
in people’s minds
That which for centuries
has called itself power
will plan, as ever, to sweep it away
with no thought at all
that there’s any spark
its bluster and trickery
can’t blow out
I will wait quiet.
I will hold this coal,
fuel it with my heart,
I will cherish the thought
that truth must win.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 15, 2020
I can smile
at the little ways you find
to be yourself, to make yourself a place
These things don’t need
to be judged or graded,
don’t need to be negotiated
You have always wanted
someone to love you just the way you are –
I can be that person – why not?
©Wendy Mulhern
June 14, 2020
Let’s all go down to the river –
now I understand
why people travel there to pray –
there’s no stain on any of us
too set in to be washed clean
The current is strong
and the spring is so pure
that every single thing
can be absolved,
every misstep forgiven
We will look up through wet eyes
and we will see each other,
maybe for the first time,
we’ll recognize, in each other, who we are –
the ones who only ever wanted
to be love.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 13, 2020
What does it take
for me to fathom
that freedom is mine,
is ours, for the taking?
That no condition can hold us hostage,
that no concerted cavalcade of lies
can mask the present sovereignty of truth?
What does it take to notice
how, in transformation, nothing changes?
how, rather, it’s a shift in focus that reveals
what always has been real
and always here.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 12, 2020
I will walk with you
in the trust that can’t be broken,
with faith in the elemental
nature of our being
You may ask, why are we here?
But in that question are assumptions
about both we and here –
Step behind those
and find the answer,
not defined in the channel
down which, river-like,
we tumble and cascade,
but in the source,
unfailing, pure, and infinite,
that sends us out,
that pours us forth.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 11, 2020
At the clean place
where we are all formed,
(not by history
or the ruts imposed on us)
Not formed by degradation or erosion,
but by the acclamation of our presence,
our hope, our love, our holding fast to life
In the moment we are formed,
not in the past sometime,
but here and now,
We can feel the pure Spirit that impels us –
our breath, our days, our joy,
steady fountain of our timeless being.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 9, 2020
I couldn’t find a poem tonight –
couldn’t find it in the last glow
of daisies against the twilight,
or in the last spark of the fireplace coals,
couldn’t find it despite all the magical manifestations
of light – trees bathed in sunlight, dark clouds behind,
sun shining through rain, how clouds
nestled in distant valleys
held light longer than the hills
I couldn’t find it, maybe because
I was looking for something important,
forgetting that everything is.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 7, 2020
Well I suppose it’s a good thing
not to have outgrown the little happys –
pleasure that comes from things people say –
their kindness and appreciation
And while it’s good to cultivate enduring joy
that burns and burbles unconditional,
that flows up into places that need relief from pain,
that offers hope and comfort where it finds itself
It also doesn’t hurt
to get a message or a package
that someone took the time to send,
that someone thought of first
It’s good to be lit up by someone’s efforts
and that my little happy please them too.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 6, 2020