Author Archives: Wendy

Winter Sap

Posted on by
Reply

You wake and seek the life elixir
but the sap of trees is sleeping
and yours — perhaps it’s crusted over
in the stress of things you tell yourself

and the press of boxes you’ve taken in —
cold steel against the softness of your inner parts,
dull ache from where you try
to bend around them

But still there’s something —
the touch of air, or movement
against the blankets,
a feather breath of light, or of another,

and the warm liquid stirs, finds strength,
begins to run the lengths
up and down along the inside of your hopes —
you stretch yourself, you move,
you feel alive.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 13, 2020

Come now, and let us reason together

Posted on by
Reply

though you may feel the tug
into the small box of sadness
though you may curl up there
though you may feel
in all honesty
it’s your only choice
the only thing that’s true and real

though you have no desire to fight
and from that standpoint
you see no reason why you’d want to,
this is not the story for you to choose

Consider life, after all.
Then your despair, or if you quibble
with the term, your nihilism,
could not exist except as foil
to all you’ve ever loved —
to love itself — and yet that love
has no need of an opposite
to be itself

By which you see
the love alone is real,
and so you might as well relax
and let it shine.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 11, 2020

Always an option

Posted on by
Reply

Today I thought about how
silence could be an option
in the early fading away
of light from the windows,
in the random lamplit reading
of books most often looked at but untouched
upon my shelves — basketry, house design,
Anglo-Welsh poetry, mushrooms —

I could stay silent
for this, another night like any,
not try to add any insights to the world
(as if that were what I do anyway)

I could have stayed silent,
but then there was this.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 10, 2020

Repentance

Posted on by
Reply

After this, I’m hoping
to remember to surrender daily,
or more often, as needed,
to give up all the small accumulations
trying to accrete,
to make themselves be something
and to fool me into thinking they are me

Ach — let them all dissolve,
may their lurid blooms float up
and dissipate
in the springing forth of what sustains me,
in the burble lift of purification,
the constant renewing of my place
in the unity of being.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 9, 2020

Blanket

Posted on by
Reply

Let me construct a thought blanket —
it’s light as lace, and made of stars,
it’s stretchy and it’s huggy
and infinitely soft

I will throw it over
my thought of you —
I hope you will feel it
snuggling in. I hope you will find
the stars nourishing,
and that the net of it
will pull things together for you
and make you feel at peace

I hope it will hold you
steady like the moon
through all the hours of night,
that it will help you sleep
and make your dreams be sweet and bright,
I hope it will cancel all your worries
and deliver you refreshed
into the morning light.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 6, 2020

Ready to launch

Posted on by
Reply

Just now, walking back from next door,
(five days in and none too soon)
it felt like the new year. Something about
the cold air, maybe,
or the gibbous moon,
something about the clarity of the dark sky

Quick as the steps through the dark,
well known enough that I wouldn’t trip
on the rough ground,
I felt a sort of whirring,
a clicking in of hope, of stamina —
I looked up — something inside said
OK, I’m ready,
ready to launch.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 5, 2020

Instant Vision

Posted on by
Reply

In the instant vision
I saw the way your touch
took its place
in the work of restoring
the radiating order —
how it gave everyone
a key thing they needed
to relax in inner peace
and look up

I saw it as a token
for how we each
will find our place
and fill in the grand design.
Broken filaments will twine themselves
back together
and the whole world
will light up.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 4, 2020

I don’t know

Posted on by
Reply

We watched the water change.
No sun to set, but gray and russet
tones darkened, something less than wind
ruffled the water, pleating the reflections,
bringing the lighter and the darker
lines across the surface

I don’t know where to put this,
you said. I don’t know where
to put anything,
not here, not anywhere.
I don’t know why I’m crying.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2020

2020

Posted on by
Reply

A year to see with clearer eyes,
a year to walk away from lies,
a year to speak the nuanced truth,
a year to listen and to hear

A year to seek the unity of mind,
a year to leave the rhetoric behind,
to find the sanity of quiet voices
and leave the ruts of falsely defined choices

It could be now, it could be just the time
to cease our flailing and take on the steady climb,
and in the face of so much we could fear
it still may be a fine, auspicious year.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 2, 2020

Something like that

Posted on by
Reply

(from the biking philosophers’ notebook)

I wouldn’t want a tame bird,
she said. Wild birds
have so much life. They don’t
need our bread

Still, a wild bird
could take you somewhere,
in the trill of song,
the dip and dart of wing

You could have a relationship
with the badlands. They could
take your breath away
in the way they pull the light
like it was a silk scarf
or a skein of time
stretched and altered,
rendered otherworldly

You could find a related essence
in a baby’s smile, in the flash
of that moment where you shared
a recognition of each other’s souls,
your unplumbed depth,
or a mutual acceptance
that lets you both stay wild
in some elemental way,
elixir of living,
life breath of day.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 1, 2020