Author Archives: Wendy

Of Crayons and Sisterhood

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Take a periwinkle crayon,
follow it down the whorl of memory
to the shiver of feeling it evoked –
not the easy love of magenta and blue-green,
but a tremulous liking,
flavor and texture
with a sliver of tears, perhaps,
a taste to grow into

Remember magenta berries,
the juicy ones with the pithy crunch
and the flavor unlike most anything –
a little sweet, a little floral,
which we ate, not knowing their name
or if they were edible,
along the high hedged path to Whitney’s house

Consider sisterhood –
its bittersweet, its viney tendrils,
multicolored and intimate,
a tie to grow into.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 4, 2020


I am the one

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Trying on the admission
that I am the one –
I am the one who needs to understand,
I am the one called
to make radical transformation
in my own mind,
to have my whole sense of being
reframed – to find my context
was much too small

I am the one who needs to change,
I am the one who needs to act,
I am the one who needs to listen,
listen to I Am,
listen to the One.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 3, 2020

My Task

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My challenge: to not be polarized,
my challenge – to not be right.
However easy it may seem,
how smooth the path along that route,
it never has delivered me
to the new place, the place
I long to go

My challenge: not to polarize.
So vastly better to be silent
than speak the worn out words
defining tribe

Mine is not a happy tribe to have come from –
the tribe of right (more oily and insidious
than the tribe of white,
which I may righteously deplore)

My task – dip seven times in Jordan,
learn the river’s lessons,
come out clean.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 2, 2020

A Stand

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Stand for truth.
A partial truth will not save us –
partial truth is another term
for untruth

Yet we come with these fragments,
don’t know the whole story
(trained all our lives in our blindnesses
so we can’t see them)

We will be fragmented
until we insist on oneness,
which will feel at times
like tearing ourselves apart
so we can let partitions be deconstructed
so we can’t cordon ourselves off
from the darkness

So we can stand
and let the light
shine through everything,
washing us clean,
showing the whole truth
and setting things right.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 1, 2020

Day’s Report

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1.
Some trees will be happy
with what I’ve done,
some may be already dead –
things I do in time, or not in time,
things I don’t do enough, or do too much,
maybe one or two things just right

2.
I started thinking about my dreams,
how even keeled they are,
while full of travel and new places
and old places and the things I’m doing,
and I thought, it’s good to be even keeled,
but why not happy? Why not filled with joy, exultant?
Or why not deeply moved, or touched with haunting music?

3.
The swallows chatter outside, excited about their nest.
We are excited, too, eager to see their new family emerging.
The late sun sifts across the field.
There’s a sock in my lap.
No conclusion.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 31, 2020

Rain and Fire

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A day of rain and fire,
tending trees and tending hearth,
learning of needs, and learning of power,
and the long journey
in which one can clasp the hand of the other
if briefly, as promise of a partnership further on

It is a day to see the field of daisies as a forest,
immeasurably long to trek through
yet coming to the end
sooner than I might think.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 30, 2020

photo by Edward Mulhern

Unpredictable

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The days spiral into summer
despite my feeling
that the spring is unwound,
that we’re done with cycles,
now catapulting off in some unknown direction,
no longer able
to predict anything

Yet I already can feel
the rolling into fall, feel the prick
of cool upon my skin, the smell
of turning leaves

I just don’t know in what way
we’ll be there with them,
whether we’ll be able to pull our feet
into the capsule and shut the door
so as to be along for the ride.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 29, 2020

Trust

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The One you can trust
has always been here –
you’ve seen it in lights
that glow, that flicker,
that sparkle, that shine,
you’ve felt it in moments
when you could suddenly tell
exactly where your heart is

You have caught at it
like fishing for the moon in a lake,
you have held it
like a sunbeam across the floor
you have sensed it,
but maybe haven’t known
that the clasp that holds it right to you
is trust

Learn to trust in little ways
or give yourself to it fully,
and feel its unmistakable embrace,
and feel its unimaginable grace.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 28, 2020

Processing

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You stumble up through the regret
of what you thought, of what you said,
not helped at all by reasons
you were maybe right in what you did

The pain seeps through,
and not just from this one,
but many instances, from near to distant past,
where you had this same wound,
where you are porous

And you need some sweet submergence
where every hole is filled
with some kind of healing substance
so you feel re-strengthened, solid

And can stand, feel your integrity contiguous
to toes, to core,
so you feel sure
that what you see and say and do is sound,
and can soar while still connected to your ground.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 27, 2020

A Large Place

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In the place where everyone is alone,
alone with their breath,
alone with their struggles

In the place where you are alone,
regardless of site,
regardless of others

In the place where no one can come
because it’s the innermost depth
of your thoughts

There is a truth that still companions you,
that only needs the space it has
to open out infinity, deliver you into the large place
where you can breathe free and see clear
and fill the purpose your heart is hoping for.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 26, 2020