When understanding dawns,
no pool of sorrow,
however hedged about with care,
however poignant,
gets to remain
Truth evaporates it
with the constancy of tender love
Love floods it
with ever present joy
Joy heals it
by being exactly what was needed –
all the tears are wiped away.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 2, 2017
What satisfies?
What fails to satisfy?
What offers home,
what fails to?
What is family?
How does it meet our needs?
We’ve been tricked for so long
about all this
As things we’re told to hold to
sift like light between our fingers,
as each promise glimmers
always out of reach,
as all the coached for goals
bring rewards that echo hollow,
we turn and turn
until we cease our turning
What satisfies
like light to open eyes
opens home and fits us safely in it,
finds cords of family
that pull enduring love
down and richly down
through generations.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 1, 2017
Come out into the green —
there is life here, in the leaves
and under them,
there is fresh air,
there are myriad surprises
Come where you are free
of all the tyrant screens
that seek to program us,
to sell and drive us
There’s something unsurpassed
in knowing without media,
communing — just you —
with other life forms
If it is left unphotoed, unrecorded,
it will keep on touching you —
the haunting song of your connection
reaching deep — deeper than anything
anyone ever told you.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 31, 2017
But if we were a peace-based society
we wouldn’t pause to honor
“fallen men and women in
the service of our country.”
We might mourn and remember
the monstrosity of war
and how it drew us into acts
we never could atone,
which only the most rigid of story lines
could grant some space to live in
(since we couldn’t live
with the bitter truth
that all war is vain)
If we were peace-based
we would honor
the courageous men and women
who stood up to the lie,
who wouldn’t buy
divisiveness of sides,
who refused to fall from love
into something partial,
who held the line of peace
till it was real.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 29, 2017
What I want to tell you
is how it felt to notice
in the space between the objects,
in the places of my thought,
the wide open lightness
of feeling no fear at all,
of knowing surely
I never was rejected,
I never was forgotten,
I never was alone
What I want to hold to
is the way I understood:
the stuff that seems so serious —
life and death, shame or acceptance —
has never been a thing
because there never was a contest.
Our belovedness
was established before time
in the place that never changes,
in the place that is assured
Our creator
was never impressed
by the threats of death or hell,
knowing that she wouldn’t choose them
and that she’s in charge
of us all.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 28, 2017
The tiny spiders
have left their tent.
They stayed there for several days,
making short forays
into the broader world
It’s said they’re born
knowing how to spin,
with the geometry
of their own span and cubit
expressed in perfect webs
that match their size
When I consider
the range and scale of life,
it strikes me as impossible
that things so small
can be so intricate
Yet it is so,
and maybe I’d do well
to step back from the snobbery of size
and seek to learn
from anything that teaches.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 27, 2017
Sweet and masterful mom
speaks gently, no hidden venom
beneath her directives
Her children respond
without trauma,
gentle interest
leading their pursuits
In this world where so many
voice their alarm about the days,
this simple presence holds
hope for the future,
we can all learn to embody
these kind ways.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 25, 2017
Sun sets painterly,
hawthorns converse,
reaching blossomed limbs
across the street,
buds bob on kiwi,
cascades of golden chain
wink beneath the green
One by one, each bloom and color
radiates through its arc,
splendid presence
in this last glow
before the dark.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 24, 2017
My entrance into the secret place
and the stillness there
is assured
The door is anywhere,
close as my thought,
close as my prayer
A quick lasso around
the rapid scramble of the day,
a net that holds
the worried chattering at bay
A silent sinking
into the depths of truth,
a steady drinking
of what fulfills me
And I am home
as I have always been,
in peace and power
same as I ever was.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 23, 2017
I’m tired of looking
round and round
in this prescribed place
of acceptability —
I’ve searched every corner
and some of what I want and need
is missing
And though I’ve been told
that my partition
is the one most everyone
wishes they were born in,
I’m not so sure
I’m thinking
I need to get out of here,
even if it means
giving up the stuff I’m told
others would most envy
I have a notion kindness
may be my ticket,
so I will prize it
and seek out every chance
to exercise it
I will build up the core
of my kindness
until it can do
all kinds of acrobatic things
or at least till it reaches
over the divide.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 22, 2017