Author Archives: Wendy

Steps

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These are confident steps
we take, under the high sky,
not that we’ve walked here before,
but we are guided
by the tall grass
and the persistent wind
and a sense of direction
that has suddenly emerged within

These are times of moving,
knowing our steps teach us
in ways our projections couldn’t,
receiving their secret knowledge
through our feet

This is why we are here,
we think, and hardly wonder
how we could have called it living,
passive in the shadow
of what the big box told us
before we walked from it,
before we were free.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 10, 2017

The Violence of Conformity

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As we start to escape
the violence of conformity,
we owe much to those
who first spoke out,
who wouldn’t call it courage
because it was desperation,
because it was the only option
besides soul-death,
because something deeper down
that instinct for survival
(or maybe that’s exactly what it was)
forced them to stand up,
howl out their truth

Who will witness this?
and who will turn
from the smooth and lethal cruelty
that calls itself normality?
Who will sprout up
in the wild, every-which-way
tumbling burgeoning
self proclamation of life?

©Wendy Mulhern
August 9, 2017

What I Needed

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I let the music take me like a kite,
I spun and swooped, I dipped and soared –
twirled without dizziness and without getting tired
as if a power not my own had moved me

I came for this, and so I was rewarded,
so, for a brief time at least, I could fly,
yet, like a kite, I needed some connection,
something to hold me up against the wind

Without that, soon I wandered aimless —
my motivation faltered, I lay down —
without the invitation to dance with others
my movement faltered, started to go bland

And that’s why your appearance
was such a welcome sight —
your eyes met mine
and launched me into flight.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 8, 2017

Confluence

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Freedom and oneness:
the only way to really
have both of them
is if you have an absolute
confluence of desires,
if in the song of what you want,
all the chords blend in their perfection,
producing new, delicious, haunting tones,
if all the rhythms
set each other off
in joyful syncopation
and all the melodies
chase each other down in bliss,
leaping and rolling,
surging and soaring

And this is how it is
for all of us
in the secret chamber
of what we want.
This, in its various ways
sparks all our quests
and so we can conclude
that it is here.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 7, 2017

photo by Edward Mulhern

Coming Clean

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As I notice myself
keeping a wary distance
from people being nice
in an L.A. kind of way
and people wearing urban liberal
like trendy clothes,
and people easy in their answers —
any kind of answers —
for why the world is wrong
in so many errant places

I see it’s all the same —
my wariness, their certainty,
the self-approving niceness,
none of which have the virtue
of simple, heartfelt keening
for the world

No matter. We’ll bring our husks,
our empty shells, our broken explanations,
we’ll set them down
where Truth’s tide will take them.
We’ll let ourselves be washed and lifted
in the embracing waves.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 6, 2017

Here Where You Are

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Here where you are,
as you are held,
nothing can jostle
your settled being

No shock nor growl
can stop the steady purring
of your confidence,
your centered peace

Not even a thousand
murmuring grumblers,
self-justified and full of disapproval,
can ever touch you

Even if it seems like
they got inside
and are screaming at you
from within —
they can’t —
they aren’t you, and never have been

Here where you are
in the Principle that holds you
you are always safe.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 5, 2017

Fighting Back

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The smoke retreats slightly
and I lift my head, best as I can,
out of the morass

I summon the image
of prison walls. If, after all,
I can imagine standing my ground,
holding out for truth
despite all fierce displays —
if I can affirm that nothing
can remove me from
the atmosphere of Spirit,
then why not here?

What knots of thought convince me
that I should go under,
that I should suffer
until the smoke disperses?
What virtue would it give me
to die from missing
the kiss of fresh air through my being?

No. I’ll fight back.
I’ll stand strong
in the atmosphere of goodness,
I’ll be a place of purity and peace.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 4, 2017

Putting off the old man

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I don’t need to be
any of the people
I’ve framed myself as.

I don’t have relationships
with any of these personas.
I don’t owe them anything —
not loyalty, not justification —
don’t need to be angry or sad
on their account.

I don’t need to keep tabs
on the stories, the slights,
the constant explanations,
don’t need to rehearse
for some imagined future confrontation.

My being has nothing to do with that.
What I’m worth is not subject
to the outcome of any contest.
These dreams leave no trace of memory
when they’re gone —
I can start here
with the practice of who I am.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 2, 2017

“Give me, oh Lord, an understanding heart”

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Take me beyond having answers
to the peace that stills the questions,
to the knowing that is the comfort
before which no doubts, no lack, can stand

I don’t expect or desire
to be seen as someone who understands —
I desire instead to see
understanding like dawn
bathing us all.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 31, 2017

On the sidewalk benches at the local pub

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At my first impression she was
fragile as paper, and I wondered
how she could settle in
to any kind of a life
like that, with so little
to be solid in

But then my husband
asked her a question
and we broke through the bubble
to find someone eager to connect
someone we might see again
and wave, and maybe even talk with

And maybe most people
are hard to know deeply
and maybe most of us have
our quirks that make us
hard to live with. But maybe
what matters is less
what we might be, and more
what we might be together.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 30, 2017