Author Archives: Wendy

Clear

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Let me lay down the confusion
that has beset my years,
let me recognize
our lives were never about this

We are not tokens, moved along a board,
we are not pawns nor rooks nor queens
nor even players.
The realm we move in
has always been the infinite —
not mind within the body
but body in the mind —
our consciousness reveals
the size of what we are

It may be hard
to come to this life knowing,
and have the knowing steadily displaced.
We won’t be always fooled,
we will shine clear,
and what we are will surface in our days.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 25, 2018

Our Days

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We do what we can
in the aftermath of tears,
in the relentless beauty of days
and the work that is too much for us

We will go home again
tired to the bone, and weathered,
but also saturated in song —
tree song and cricket song
and the creaking flap of raven flight

We will return, as we have
so many times. We’ll take up
the work we couldn’t finish.
We’ll struggle through the cold
of the long edges of days
and be graced by their brilliance,
and learn the meaning of work,
perhaps. And the meaning of praise.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 24, 2018

Wasteland

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No one is left behind —
not at the laundromat
or the cafe´, not on the shoals
of screen-fed expectations

The song that rises unexpected
from the woman in the car next to ours
while we wait for laundry in the parking lot
shows that there’s room in every life
for grace

No one is left behind,
not even me — I can’t be left
to wander in the wasteland
of looking from the outside
at other people’s lives
at the laundromat, at the cafe´,
along the streets of Springfield
on a Saturday, where other people
have lives that might be less disconnected
than ours. Or maybe not.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 22, 2018

Carrying Water

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Insect arcs like flecks of sun
flit across my path —
I see them as threads
weaving in parts of a pattern
I knew about in theory
and still don’t understand,
but now can see a bit more
of what they’re connected to

My path, this inefficient tracing
back and forth, up and down
along the day
is also flecked with sun
and the reflections of my mind
and the rhythm of my gait —
these, too, are all part of the same thing
which I haven’t mastered
but can dance in.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 21, 2018

Secret Peace

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I think not many people
want to consider
what it’s like
on the other side
of the unthinkable
— certainly I never did

And when they say
they just can’t imagine it,
that is most likely true,
though their minds have thrown up images
of the pain,
and walled it off quickly
(that is what I always did)

Yet there are also many
(more and more of them,
as we get older)
who have crossed
(or been thrown over)
the line

And of them
I’m sure many have found
the sweet secret peace,
and hold it like a small light inside
and don’t tell anyone about it
(for who would they tell?)
but you can see it there
if you know to look.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 19, 2018

Country Living

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After all, why wouldn’t we
want to share our little cabin with mice?

It’s the warmth, I think,
that attracts them,
more than the food,
about which we’ve been careless

One day after rain
in the chill of evening
we lit a fire
to make things cozy
and early the next morning
we heard running in the roof

And this evening we found a little mouse
fallen down onto the hearth.
My husband captured it
and took it for a long walk

He said it was just a baby.
I said, if it’s a baby, maybe it’s a rat —
a soothing thought to take to bed.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 18, 2018

Visions

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The man said he saw himself as paint
spread out over the landscape,
he saw himself as if dissolved
but didn’t care

I saw myself as the hills themselves,
and the trees on them, thrusting into sky,
I saw myself as flight itself, as song glide,
comprising all the realm my consciousness could span

I saw myself known, in the sharing of space
with others as vast and as free,
I saw myself knowing them
sweetly and intimately

When we come back with these visions,
what shall we do? How shall we live
in these things that we know to be true?
— Live in the vision, live from the vision,
bring it more clearly in view.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 16, 2018

Circling

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Nothing moves in a straight line.
Turkey buzzards circle and circle
without a flap — just the slightest
adjustment of feathers,
and suddenly they’re much higher,
up on a thermal

Swallows soar faster, their circles
suddenly crumpling as they dive
into a different plane,
following their flying feast

Our project, too, soars and crumples,
regroups, gains ground …
We could use a thermal around now,
or a fine and crooked line of tasty objects
of nourishment and motivation,
as we drive towards the long-envisioned end.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 14, 2018

Chrysalis

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This is not something I believe,
for to believe requires a structure of belief,
a scaffolding of many
assumptions and perceptions
wired together, bracing up each other

And here, those suppositions
are dissolved in awe
before a truth so fundamental
that nothing of the past remains

And so I wait
to see what vectors of reality
can now inform my breath,
infuse my walking
(or whatever way I move)

I wait to see
my substance now emerging —
its order timeless
but new to me.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 13, 2018

Coming Back

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It doesn’t take long,
back from town,
for the land to make us feel better —
the fresh air and soft rhythm of trees
bearing us up, like these
gently swaying hammocks

I can see the space between the sounds of things,
insect buzz and wind chime,
bird chirp and the imagined rustle
of tree moss,
the tick, from time to time,
of falling needles

And it’s easier to feel
the embracing size of everything,
here where insects carry sun spark
on their wings
across the shadows
under attending trees.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 10, 2018