As to the question of
why I am here:
I am here for this moment,
here for this healing,
here for the cup of
whatever fills my day
The puzzle piece I am
is not improved
by trying to make it more
like other pieces
that have already fit in.
The puzzle piece you are,
likewise, will not be helped
by alteration
It is not mine
to choose another cup
but to drink this one
and be satisfied.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 3, 2018
In the way forward
there are no bragging rights,
no carefree membership
in some self-satisfied association
In the way forward
there will be solitude.
In the wilderness of
no one to ask for help
there is a hardening off, a honing,
a time of leanness
and a propelling hunger
Rumor has it
there is great reward on the other side,
that, upon arrival, there will be celebration,
singing. There will be that precious
everyday joy, as well as the special one
of having traversed the chasm
I don’t know anyone here
who knows this from experience.
We shall see.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 2, 2018
The only place we’ve ever lived
is in the place where we can never die.
This isn’t what it looks like,
these days, these goals —
whatever I have thought of them before —
these changes . . .
Now I’ll keep paying attention
to what lights us up
deep down at the source,
what makes us live and move
before we even enter all the surface fray
This isn’t what it looks like
but it is something. Indeed,
it overrides whatever I had thought —
these changes, this which never changes.
This which I may find to be enough.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 1, 2018
I sense that I have barely comprehended
the size of unconditional
and what it means
to be companioned in that vastness,
comforted at every step
And how it is that there’s no far away
in everpresence, no departure
from here. Space without distance,
development with no constraint of time,
nothing locked away by past or future,
everything at hand in earth and heaven.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 31, 2018
These flowers bloom
even if their stems bow down,
even if their faces hit the soil
and their petals
begin to commune
with the ground, with the turning
of everything back
to the place of starting over,
humble and dark and untroubled
by being anything with a name,
anything but ready
for the things
whose time has come to begin.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 30, 2018
Baby steps toward healing —
being able to talk about it,
recognizing there was nothing
we could have changed,
given what we understood then,
given what we knew
Nothing that, had we done differently,
could have brought a different outcome.
Nothing short of
the salvation of the whole world
could make a difference
So there it is —
what could have helped us then
can help us even now.
We turn around and face the place
where dawn will come.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 28, 2018
This is how it is
living every day in the sunlight of Truth —
today as eternity,
no track record required,
just this one day as a thousand years,
just a thousand years
as one day
This is how you know
in this now
that what you are
has always been,
even as it must be —
your shine proves eternity,
your essence proves truth.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 27, 2018
You will bring us joy every day,
long beyond the tears,
joy of presence, joy of spirit,
joy of every sweet thing
we learn from you
You still bring us
the hum of strong connection,
the swift running of emotion
and the sense of how important
all this is. Not schemes and plans
but simple daily being with each other,
you still teach us
every time we greet you in our hearts.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 26, 2018
And life asserts itself
unendingly, with patience and with joy,
in baby ducks and beavers
and herons on the wing
and that blackbird
with its exultant warble
in the late afternoon sun
that still reaches it, there in the treetop
Life continues, in dating and in weddings,
in friends confiding in each other,
in families, in passing generations
And we will, too,
affection being the most important thing —
we’ll hold it tenderly
and we will rise.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 25, 2018
It isn’t that I’ve lost the will to live,
it’s just that I’m so tired
of how I keep on running back
to the same old holes,
empty though they’ve always been —
keep on anticipating
that my thirst will finally be quenched
What does it take
to not be left again along the bank —
to ride the flow all the way down
to where I lose those habits
of seeking where there’s nothing
and missing the deep healing of the day?
©Wendy Mulhern
May 24, 2018