Though you may fall and fall
through the bars of memory,
hitting at moments, going back and down
Though you may feel
striped beyond redemption,
branded by the light and dark,
strobed to instability
You cannot fail.
This is not about you —
it’s about your Maker,
and your Maker knows you whole.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 31, 2018
And if you feel you can’t forgive,
can’t be forgiven,
if barbs from old stings
tear at your flesh,
let that body go —
it was never any more
than just a dream
Whatever scars it has
will melt away, along with
all its trappings of identity.
The memories it holds
that waited to be triggered
will melt as well, giving place
to what has longed to waken
to the touch of grace.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 30, 2018
There is a way forward.
Joy, it turns out, is unsuppressible —
it pushes its way through rocks,
through roots,
it moves sideways, as it needs to,
but ever up — it finds the surface,
it emerges
Joy, it turns out,
changes everything —
past, present, future —
brings the sense of things
into startling focus,
into sparkling view.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 29, 2018
Having walked once
on the shore where light rules,
we see it everywhere,
and in the quiet of the scrish of sand
give up our battles
There is no need to fight
over the relative presence
of light — no person or way of thinking
owns it. It owns every landscape
where it appears. It will always,
effortlessly,
bring itself forth.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 28, 2018
There might be other rhythms here,
rain in the gutter, metallic tick and trickle,
rain on the window, the hum
of spaces in between —
rhythms to hear when the stereo’s off,
music against the quiet
You get your message across
by listening, more than by speaking,
by finding, like these raindrops,
the place where understanding trickles in,
and where it glances off,
and needs to be collected, redirected
You listen, and your message finds its way
like water, into the waiting ground.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 27, 2018
We can also find pleasure
in aesthetics, colors combining
in journals, in fabrics,
musical artistry, broadcast for viewing,
planes of reflection, hum of appliances
One could spend time indoors
in a place like this,
hardly missing the somewhat tame outdoors.
There is time for this
when the rain pushes in,
and there’s gratitude,
gratitude for shelter.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 26, 2018
There are many ways to come home —
driving a truck north through the rain,
building a fire, centering thought
In each place called home
there are needs to meet
and ways we are met
So we have come home,
today, as many days.
Tomorrow we will come home again,
from where we have been,
in tomorrow’s ways
We seek the same thing
and we find it,
ever the same, ever new.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 26, 2018
Blessed and at peace
in the sweet time of closure,
end of day, work done,
I feel you near me,
droll and kind
We have come along this way together,
you, of late, making your presence known
as light, as gentle impulse,
as patient humor at my dim grasp
of what you know so well
We will be together
now and continually,
and more fully,
the more I comprehend.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 24, 2018
Week after sunny week
we raced against the rain,
and tasks opened out
like walking to the mountains
(the destination never getting closer)
We thought we were almost done
for weeks and weeks (well, I, for one,
had ceased believing), finding reserves
for yet another day of all-out grind
And when the rain finally came,
ptick ptick against the plastic,
oval drops appearing on the wood,
we still thought we weren’t ready,
but maybe we were
Or maybe we are really close,
and maybe the rain
(what fell was just a sprinkle)
if we can find the strength
will grant us one more day.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 23, 2018
In this autumn time
when hours put forth
their ever-changing views
as light dances with fog and leaves
and birds we haven’t seen before
make their appearance
We can breathe wonder,
we can breathe hope,
we may notice
as often as we notice breath —
not all the time,
though it, too, is continuous.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 22, 2018