Author Archives: Wendy

Life Flow

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In all the things we think we know,
so many things we don’t —
a city in a frond of fern, a universe,
the vast unfolding vibrance
in the corridors between the cells,
all the exuberance that life can send
coursing through those unseen channels

In these two turkey hens
ambling among the ferns,
nonchalantly snapping up the bugs,
chirping conversationally as they step —
perhaps two nebulae
grandly moving through the depths of space

They all — we all — are orchestrated
in the unceasing law of Life’s eternal joy,
our movement so much deeper than will or whim,
held by its breathing through us all.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 16, 2018

Sea Change

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(for Jennifer, from the biking philosophers’ notebook)

If clouds can soften all at once,
so can hearts, so can long-entrenched
opinions, and all our expectations

There is a language
beneath the languages,
there is a way we know
that we don’t know of,
there may be sudden sparks
that arc across the seeming distance,
showing us, at last, that we are one.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 15, 2018

Cartesian

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Cartesian calculations fall unevenly
over the land —
we walk on the bumps of frost heaves
and mole diggings, deer boundings
and many other unknown forces

It’s the same with everything we thought we knew —
we’ve learned there’s no point in arguing
about minute alignments in the realm of straight lines —
they may inform us,
but none of them contain the final truth.
We need to find the places upon the land
where they all meet,
we need to soften every view
to find what’s true.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 14, 2018

Life Line

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I don’t even wish
I had understood these things sooner —
they render such desires irrelevant.
Loss is gain, life propels us forward

I have clearly reached the place
of the divide of my life line
written on my right hand (not my left)
that I had wondered at since childhood,
told myself maybe the left is what counts for me,
being left handed. Maybe palm lines
mean nothing

In any case it doesn’t matter.
There are no circumstances which
avoiding would release me
from the journey I’ve been given,
no failure on my part which could deprive me
of the path where I’ve been sent.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 13, 2018

Tectonic

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The aftermath of this momentous shift
has me rethinking
all the well worn habits of my thought,
noticing the places I have drifted,
how my feet don’t seem to quite touch down

The day hums along its course,
people meet and plan —
their life arcs are as perfect
as the cause that runs them.
And what is misaligned
will shift and come together,
smooth or volcanic,
it doesn’t matter

Just like me, just like my finding
that though I crash through pain,
I do not stay there, and everything
that comes to me can be redeemed.
It may take time, but time is not the factor —
it will take place,
it will be all that’s ever been.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 11, 2018

Dream Light

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Where does the light in dreams come from,
here in the dark woods, in the dark cabin,
when rain is falling on the metal roof
and all the lamps are out?

How is it that I can know you in the dream
when I don’t really see you,
when we’re conversing
while both looking at the same object?

What is presence anyway,
and what is absence?
How do we see each other,
how are we seen?
This world is more mysterious
than I imagined, and vaster,
since it also houses the realm of dreams.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 10, 2018

These Days

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These days the bottom falls out of us
at unexpected times.

It could be a good thing,
dropping us through
our soggy cardboard efforts
to hold ourselves together,
down to the waiting, changing land,
the rain and all the spreading seeping
and the tender sparkles
of returning morning sun.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 9, 2018

Where we find each other

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We will meet in the place
where nobody can be wrong,
where the luminosity of everything,
in night or day,
in solitude or chorus,
silences all empty, righteous chatter
and we blend, in the knowing
of the whole, holy, wondrous order
that liberates each searching tendril
and synchronizes every heart.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 8, 2018

Listening

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The land speaks to me
in insect hum
and in the chirps of birds
along their daily paths

The air speaks to me
in the awakened breath
of all that is alive,
that rises eagerly
from the patient soil
and makes itself known

The day speaks to me
in the steady shine
of its curving arc
as large and subtle
as the earth’s turning

It says, you will find peace
as you learn to be peace,
it says, come with me
and I’ll show you.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 7, 2018

Answers

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I ask myself the questions
but I don’t know how it happens,
don’t know how all these distant things
come together,
how we collect what we need,
how we join the pieces just right
so things really work

There are so many arenas
in which I don’t know this answer

But I will note that,
in this one instance at least,
when I cried,
when I confessed my helplessness
(and after I had failed)
the answer came in
all by itself.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 5, 2018