Can love be a choice?
Here I am, living my life every day –
Can I choose to love it?
Certainly the calls of birds
elicit a response of joy,
as can the feeling that the day’s just right
for plants to grow. And the exquisite mouths
of wild iris before they unfurl,
and laughter, and the kindness
I can find in eyes
These things show me my love of life
before I even make a choice,
so if I choose it consciously,
what then?
©Wendy Mulhern
May 25, 2020
I sit waiting for what the evening will tell me.
It speaks in the voice of little birds,
songs and hopes so much larger
than their frames,
It speaks in the voice of frogs
and in the cooling breeze
If I don’t understand its language,
maybe I will later
as threads come together,
as things grow to intertwine.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 24, 2020
You haven’t been asked to be virtuous.
You haven’t been asked to be a good girl.
You haven’t even been asked to persevere against long odds
You’ve only been asked one thing.
You’ve been asked to love.
Love with heart and soul and mind,
submerge yourself there,
lose your self there,
and let the nature of Love itself
be the you that unfolds
throughout the course of every day.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 22, 2020
Our days are marked
by bright and dark,
just like this weather
that blows through repeatedly,
tipping the trees and pummeling the ground,
then giving way to steamy sunshine
through which the fox trots alert
and turkeys roam in gaggles
I seek to be as unmoved as the landscape
when the rain and sun rolls through,
I seek to feel the shine of bright and dark
all the way to my core.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 21, 2020
The line between ridiculous and lovable
may shift, suddenly,
surprising the beholder
with unexpected feelings
Good thing that lovable
has deeper saturation –
once you have seen that way,
you’re unlikely to go back,
©Wendy Mulhern
May 20, 2020
This is you. You meet yourself
before you step into the morning,
before the flood
of all the to dos,
and should have dones,
before you square your shoulders
to face the day
This is you even before the ever hopeful
sense of yourself
gets up again
to see if things will go your way,
before the wistful sense
puts on its cloak of competence,
acceptability, arranges its opinions
and steps out into the fray
This is you before you win,
before you lose,
before you look in the mirror
or open your mouth.
This is you. You have your back.
You never need to step down
from your true essence
and your strength is plenty
to hold up the world.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 19, 2020
Now that I’m sure
all contests are over
(no one to tally my merits,
not even me)
What do I have but this day
and its sounds?
Trees dripping from recent rain,
blackbirds at the pond,
towhees and turkeys,
sparrows and mourning doves,
others whose names I don’t know
What do I have but this day
and its learnings, steps on the ground
through the rain loosened mud,
things we will build, and things that will wash away,
What do I have but this day?
©Wendy Mulhern
May 18, 2020
This slow lesson
I seem to have to learn
so many times –
should be a simple thing,
and so it is, extremely so –
the lesson of the One
No being right for me
if it’s a wrong for someone else,
no inner constructs
dividing me from others,
no chambers in my house
kept dark by unkind thoughts,
nothing in myself that I deny
One truth to hold my threads together
One light to shine all the way through
One law to clarify all my perceptions
till I’m transparent, till I’m shone anew.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 16, 2020
We learn the value
of things we thought were nothing,
things we thought were torments,
places we thought empty
All these must bow,
they are compelled,
just at their striking point,
to show their truth, release their mystery,
must give place to the law
that only blessing comes,
and only good is given –
the law that turns them upside down,
makes of their threats
windows to heaven.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 14, 2020
This is the kind of day the land needs,
drinking the rain, soothed and eager,
catching a different kind of breath
when the rain stops, and sun catches
the bright raindrops on leaves and flowers
As for us, we try to do our outside tasks
between the showers, sometimes successful,
sometimes caught, while our dirt road
swims with red-brown rivulets,
and plants flatten for a moment, till the next,
when we can almost see them growing.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 14, 2020