Author Archives: Wendy

Home Within

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You come home to yourself
and you may realize
you didn’t need to play those games
of measuring, of shoring yourself up,
you didn’t need to feel attacked or slighted

The clarity you felt in moments
when you saw another from the inside,
when you understood a way of moving
in centered calm and mastery —

That’s you — and it can lead you
safely through the clouds of doubt,
it can deliver you
before you even fall into confusion

It is you, and you can stay there,
secure in what you ever more will be,
home in yourself, and royal
all along the colored roads of life.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 13, 2019

In the midst

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And if I ask myself
the reason for my joy,
I may consider how we breathe beauty
in sight and scent and sound,
and how we work humble —
ready to serve and learn,
and how in all this
(constant as cricket song)
we are borne up
by the presence we’re coming to recognize
as our own,
as it is given us
in the midst of every day.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 12, 2019

A New Day

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Day dawns,
rain gone
(if for a moment)
sun flirts with wind,
clouds glint and grin

We free a dove
that trapped itself
in our young cherry tree’s enclosure,
I try the spirits
and today it’s clearer
whence they hail

These things do not depend
on weather, or on any gods
society has shaped and propped up,
they don’t depend on how we felt
or what we said and did

It is the Spirit
that sustains us,
breathing what we are
into our consciousness,
planting the clarity of our cause
into our frames.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 10, 2019

Rainy

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I let myself fill up with rain.
It was an indulgence,
not something to sustain,
not something I have time for
in the day to day,
while the various buckets
we put under leaks
register their irregular
pticks and clangs and taps,
and hope seems to be leaking, too

We will get through this —
our source of strength does not depend
on all things rosy.
It will show itself steady,
well able to overcome
both internal and external rain.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 9, 2019

Bending

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The straight line of our intent
begins to meet the season’s curve —
bracken fern starting to turn,
and trees along the river

Garden plants have given up,
the coming rain too late,
other factors we can’t see
informing them
their time of growth is over

No longer can we count on
stretches of long, sunny days —
they shorten, and the rains
begin to take their place

We will bend, because we have to,
we will find a way,
our intent will weave itself in,
for the circle belongs to us, too.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 8, 2019

The object of our hope

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What we’ve been taught to hope for
is so paltry, so far from being able
to deliver satisfaction, that it’s surprising
that we feel so disappointed
when those hopes are not fulfilled

If someone told you,
You can have the sky,
and free flight in it,
you can have fellowship
with all the thought, with all the music,
you can sing color and dance
the whole kaleidoscope of pattern,
would you believe them?

If someone told you,
You can be the love
that comprehends and celebrates
every small and large
impulse of being,
you can be the love that nurtures,
that engenders joy and exaltation,
would you embrace that hope?

Here is the voice telling you all that.
You don’t have to say if you believe it —
only notice if you want it.
That, eventually, will be clue enough.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 7, 2019

Watching the Weather

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Standing under the porch roof
I aimed my camera
and tried to catch a lightening bolt

I failed, though I saw five of them
— lack of faith, perhaps,
in my ability, or in the likelihood
that it would strike again

Wind brought the smell of rain
(though it rained little)
and relief, if for the moment,
from the sultry stillness
and the thickness
of the thunder-laden air

To have a roof over our heads
is cause for gratitude,
which marks how far we’ve come
and gives a standpoint from which
we can receive more.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 5, 2019

Recognition

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We will know more of each other
as we meet in Spirit,
more of our hearts, more of our sparks,
more of our flights, our home, our satisfaction

We will know more of the land, too —
what it needs, what it gives,
who it shelters

All things grow richer as we’re rarified,
as we shift our cause/effect allegiance
to where our source lies.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 4, 2019

The Putative Journey

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Sometimes it seems
there is so far to go,
so much to learn, so much to purge,
so many constructs to wean myself from

Sometimes I glide along
thinking how close I am
to my arrival, thinking
how far I’ve come,
how comprehensive
my transformation has been thus far

And then I see
how much I’m missing,
how vast the chasm
between my understanding and the truth

Good thing it isn’t up to me!
Good thing my life is held
in beautiful unfolding
where no partial understanding,
no faulty sense of needing to arrive
has any traction.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 3, 2019

Re-vision

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Retile my past —
take all those broken squares,
those incomplete perceptions,
those ways I failed to see
the truth of being,
so I can understand
through present windows
that nothing in my life was ever missing

Is not this grace —
what wipes away without a trace
the meted consequence,
all our indebtedness?
— and in its place
reveals the fruit that waits
ready to satisfy
when it is seen.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 2, 2019