There’s no escape for me
from the debt I owe
to my past,
no self-satisfied slide away
from what I was cast in
To be truly free
I must go back
to what I walked away from,
must bring the liberation I have won
to my perception
of those I left behind
This is not a task for intellect
nor for alleged virtue I have earned.
I surrender it
to the great truth that lifts me —
if I am lifted,
so, too, must be we all.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 1, 2017
We are not passengers —
we are the horse
We are the ones running
and each of us can feel
the surprise touch,
each of us can be awakened
from our sense of waiting
for someone else to do the miracle
so we can cheer
We already are the miracle,
we already are the shining
of Love’s children —
look at us
I mean look at yourself
on the inside
You’ll see it, that chain of light
all laced through you,
the one you fight for every day,
the one you live for
We are the miracle
and nothing stops us
from running through to claim it.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 30, 2017
Pray for us —
we acknowledge we are lost
and all the tools we normally would use
are overwhelmed
by current inundations
Pray for us —
we don’t believe that any simple help
from people, though their efforts
may be great,
can reach the need
we flounder in right now
Pray for us —
if we are to be saved
it has to be by something
that can’t go down with darkness,
something with enough light
to startle us awake from nightmares
Something that knows
the buoyant truth of us
was never buried
and will outshine
all the terror, loss, and pain.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 29, 2017
Well, who wouldn’t delight
in the law of Life, in the law of light?
Who doesn’t thrill
with the intricacy of every interlocking need,
each interlacing gift?
Who wouldn’t be amazed
at how perfectly
all these separate entities
flock and soar together,
turn and breathe as one?
From here comes the courage
to leave behind the old story,
that’s based on conflict
and has to have an enemy
and makes its horrid bargains
and insists on being right
There’s plenty of evidence
for the goodness of everything.
It may not make a good story,
but it makes a good life.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 28, 2017
(in contemplation of thirty-five years)
These days you and I
move forward in easy step,
our common yoke our common dream
we lean into together
The unutterable magnitude
of our aspiration
leaves us often in silence,
or we talk of tasks and plans
as if those were the sum of our engagement
But our hope, laced far too often
with the fear we will not speak
binds us more deeply
than years, than memories —
in some moments we may fathom
we are closer than as one
our life together
less choice than destiny.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 26, 2017
I come again to feel the need
for that gentle lift
along the strings of my being,
straightening essential lines,
untangling the twists
and places things have fallen
topsy turvy
I need to feel the breath of light
that courses through the strings,
that gives them strength and vibrancy
and sets them in alignment
This is the love touch I desire —
the one that knows the order
of all the threads of me,
the one that sees me whole
and sets me there, lit up from within,
clear channeled, free.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 24, 2017
One day you find yourself held
in the shine that lets you
be as you envisioned you could be,
suddenly strong enough to wield
the needed tools, precision locked in,
clarity of mind
In a rush, you are riding a wave —
the power of you, bearing you up,
the surge of joy, to be so carried
as if it were a force outside yourself
delivering this lift
You will seek this shine again.
You will look for places
where it might happen,
seek out the people
who witnessed it with you,
come back to tasks which,
in doing them, you felt it —
It may not be easy to find,
but knowing it’s there,
you’ll keep looking.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 23, 2017
Be forewarned —
the work will change you,
you will not keep the quick
conclusions, the know-it-all opinions,
the glib solutions
that brought you, eager, to the job
You will use your mind
but not in the way you imagined —
there will be great gaps
in what you understand,
you will have to start from nothing,
again and again
Patience will be your best tool,
patience and perseverance
and enough inner silence
to hear what the task suggests
Your body will learn to keep going —
give it permission to work hard
and a way to get warm at day’s end,
it will rise to the occasion,
and serve you well
and be your friend.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 22, 2017
I will clothe myself
in honest work, in steady initiative,
I will clothe myself in hopefulness
and in an open mind,
I will wear clarity of thought
so I will see present solutions
to each small challenge
that the work presents
And if this garb
is deemed unworthy,
I will wait to see
what else is needed,
what inner strength, what outer grace,
what patience, what forgiveness,
what place where I can laugh from
and whatever other qualities present themselves to me
to help me get the job done.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 21, 2017
And if it turns out
the rules we’ve been playing by
are not the real ones,
if it turns out
the object of the game
is not what we thought
and all our cheering on
and all our disappointments
all this time
have been askew
from how the actual score was counted
We may find
we still have made
progress we weren’t noticing —
skills attained, if faultily employed,
and gains that came
from bringing our best efforts
to what we thought, till now,
had been the game
And then we’ll have a new focus,
and then the way we move will change
as we employ a more attuned alignment
and stretch into our fuller range.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 20, 2017