I looked out the window
and thought of how the names
of colors (or lack of names)
affect the way we see,
and prayer and fasting
and what it means to believe
I tended the fire
and drank my tea
and considered what it means
to lose all faith in death,
and what life is
if it’s not temporal
Outside the ravens
were droll and musical,
the cat was eager for my lap,
and if I’m able to cast out demons,
I’m also willing. I take that with me
into my day.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 21, 2019
Our enslavement lifts like fog.
Our freedom begins to shine
like fresh-washed air —
Though there may be
many layers till we walk
fully unencumbered,
till we fly
in the manner we’ve always desired,
every little liberation
makes us stand taller,
lets us breathe deeper,
gives us the grace
to love each other
with more generosity and kindness,
shows us that we all are moving
through the same layers of clearing,
our eyelids tingling with the dew of heaven.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 20, 2019
We are hungry for stories,
for story is the mind’s path,
the promise
that we could wend our way
out of the dullness of where we think we are
to something redemptive,
something we can almost taste
And we are foiled
by the devil’s practice
of shoving the tails of the stories
into their mouths, of making sure
they only lead us back
to the same place
We are foiled by opposition —
by the assertion
that stories require enemies —
good guys and bad guys,
even if only in our own minds
There is a truer story.
It exists in the place before the impulse,
before the thought. It exists
in searing lifting pure light
of your still unnamed desire,
and if you follow it,
it will lead you home.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 19, 2019
You: What are you thinking about?
Me: Same thing I always —
You: Oh, God …
Me: That’s exactly right
You: And me, I’m thinking about
what I always think about, too …
(a pause, we snuggle in)
…the house — how to build it,
what to do next
The wonder of it is
that we can come together,
or almost — good enough
to keep the project going
day after week after year.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 17, 2019
Subtly, the palette changes —
bracken ferns to brown,
grasses back to green,
gold and orange along the river,
water vapor’s silver sheen
We raced the rain
all day yesterday
while the sun slowly made room
for more and more clouds
and the cat hunted happy in the field
and the needed tasks got done
And this morning,
rain holding off for just a while,
you added final touches
so now we can look up
and see the colors
and watch the rain.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 16, 2019
It may look like death
when someone breaks through the skin
of the world, of the dream —
they may seem to fall out of it
and others may mourn
It’s only when you look closely
at the hole they made,
when, for a moment,
you see the light streaming in,
you might get the inkling
there’s something beyond this shell,
you might start trying
to learn what it is.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 14, 2019
You can find that angels
are walking with you
as your feet step down
the gravel road,
and your heart suddenly fills
with satisfaction
because you’re good at what you’re doing,
because someone made you laugh,
because the air is full of grace
In so many ways
the fundamental fact of goodness
makes itself known to your soul.
You could call them angels
for how they translate truth
into a feeling you so deeply
desire and understand.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 13, 2019
I say no to this cat
but she proves I’m not serious,
pushing her way nose first
into my lap,
waving her tail in my face
We compromise —
she gets to stay here
if she sits still,
if she lets me write
As for the mind of cats —
she must think it very strange,
all the little things I find
to busy myself — pointless things,
when I could be affording her a lap,
reveling in mammal warmth,
feeling the sunshine
There is a place
for butterscotch fur
and a tail that waves just so,
and a secret hunting side
to keep sheathed,
except for a touch of needle claws
against my thighs.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 12, 2019
The verdict of defeat
is not the final word,
however hard and flat
the voice intoning it
Nothing said in hard, flat tones
can be the final word,
for truth has joy, and truth
is ever singing
When you hear truth’s voice,
the ringing of it
will make you sit still.
You won’t want to do anything
but listen
When you hear truth’s voice,
all that’s hard and flat in you
will melt —
all that speaks to you in cruel tones,
all that is vindictive and contemptuous
will turn to dust and wash away,
and leave you sparkling clear and true,
toning in the voice that knows your name.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 11, 2019
I start to believe
that this is not a matter of
evolving, not about
some distantly perceived
far off enlightenment
This perception has run
like sheen on fabric
all along the weaving of my life,
in my waking moments, in my memories,
in my hopes, in my assessments of my days
Everything Spirit — the spirit of everything,
everything held in its essence inviolate,
everything formed in the Mind that conceives it,
nothing whose essence can fail
Yes, this has been a thing I didn’t know,
something whose knowing now saves me from fear
but in its perception, I see that it has to be
something I’ve always known.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 10, 2019