These are the orbits
in which we try
to find our life,
the circling in,
the haphazard intersection
of some memory or dream
with what we’ve called reality,
the moments of freedom
and the hours of keeping watch,
the forced leisure
and the long waiting
This is a time which may seem long
but we’ll find a perspective
in which it was short.
We’ll find a way to move,
we’ll find a peace.
We don’t need the last good bye
to find release.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 8, 2017
No flight is without grace.
Though raucous caws may mark
disputings, though there may be
ungainly pecking orders, ruffled feathers
Still each one finds the gentle cushion
in the rush of forces they are one with
as they rise and dip with expertise
and no negotiation,
casting themselves effortlessly
into the stream, borne up
just as they expect
The scheme of everything
holds each in place,
no flight, however brief,
is without grace.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 7, 2017
Well, I suppose we all
live in different worlds
and intersect each other
tenuously, along the meanings
of words and gestures
and a set of frames
we each call every day
And only in haphazard ways
sustain the prevalent illusion
of having a shared world
and similar perceptions
And so it’s not so strange, perhaps
to see the old man otherworlding,
slouching and nodding, sleeping in his chair,
and waking, seeming that he doesn’t see us,
or making statements
from some other when and where
I guess we choose our levels
of intersection, how much we work
on depth in our connections,
how much we try to reconcile
what others see with that which we perceive
Perhaps he’s tired of working at it
(and also never really tried)
and now he simply drifts,
or else he chose to leave.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 6, 2017
Let’s ride with glee
on our small spurts of progress,
like the first time, on a unicycle,
I rode three feet unaided —
Yes! This is a milestone —
it’s worth the exhilaration
even if I’m not ready yet
to join the circus
Success builds on success
like seedling leaves that sprout
from cotyledons and grow bigger,
each of them with a potential
new leaf behind its ear
We can celebrate
today’s small gains —
they will propel us
through the year.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 5, 2017
Though it is past solstice,
darkness still comes on sudden –
though the day has been bright
and there’s still pale orange
around the horizon,
the trees have gone all silhouette,
bringing their near blackness
into the equation,
and the half moon, now in mid sky,
is already bright.
Early to bed and late to rise
seems a good motto
in this very cold time of year.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 4, 2017
There is no secret
that can be hidden
from honest hearts,
for they are bound together
in the pulse of everything
The rhythm teaches them,
the beat sustains them,
the sequence of the wave,
in how it moves and flows
to each one in its perfect time
assures there is no lost knowing,
for they are all connected
There is no shadow government
that can control the working
of inner truth —
It feeds us from within
with what we are, with
what can never be subjugated,
because there is no place to stand
outside the All.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2017
Oh, we are learning this slowly!
But maybe that’s OK. Maybe we have
plenty of time, as long as it takes
Maybe the speed of time
is a function of
the pace of our learning.
Maybe time and learning
are both the same,
both nothing
in the scheme of eternity
Maybe we’re just finding
what we’ve always known,
and we will remember
how to take in
all dimensions at once,
so we can see them dance around each other,
so we can dance with them.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 2, 2017
And if we sit around
reading books all day,
one day a year,
what does it matter?
And if we lost our equilibrium
for one long moment,
if we yelled and screamed
and said unrepeatable things
to someone who won’t remember,
does it matter?
We woke up this morning feeling good,
feeling close, well rested, well connected.
Later, we felt the weight
of our responsibility to save the world
through the concentration of our best thoughts,
but that passed quickly,
overtaken by a story in a book
and the putting aside
of most everything present
I may pick it up again
with the grave attention it deserves:
tomorrow gives us another chance.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 1, 2017
The last day of the year
dawns foggy, and continues overcast.
We sleep later than our habit,
tendrils of memories
interspersing themselves
with dreams, and with images
of streams, currents of possibility
weaving open and closed,
forming lenticular shapes along the flow
Artistic expressions from others’ lives
placed up against my own
invite reflection
These days we keep being asked
to take a side. I will not take a side,
for that is what conquers us.
I will take a stand.
I will stand for what is free and true,
I will stand for ribbons of stream flow
braiding lives into thirst-quenching unity,
I will stand for the excitement
of streaming, soul to soul,
along the course of life,
I will stand for pure reflective pools
and the welcoming in
of everything that yearns,
everything that hears.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 31, 2016
We try to find momentum
on this ride that carries us
with glacial ponderosity
along a course in which we have
neither steerage nor vision —
just the slight sinking feeling
that we are moving. Maybe
at the speed of days, maybe slower
We look for grace
in the things that feed us —
smiles and conversation,
progress in our work,
the glow that comes from being kind
We will find a music for these times,
we will use it to fly
a few feet off the ground,
just enough to give us delight,
just enough to feel alive.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 30, 2016