Author Archives: Wendy

Self Doubt

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Carkeek tree

Well if the only thing required
is to not give up, I think
I should be able
to manage that

The exposure
of all my years of
not really pulling my weight
will not by itself sink me
just as long as I don’t
keep on doing nothing

It scares me, the level of my helplessness.
But maybe I can do something.
Maybe there is a use
for my mind, for my perspective

Maybe if I just
don’t give up today,
things will start getting clearer
and eventually
what I’m here for
will be apparent to me
and also others.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 19, 2016

Time

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carkeek early

Maybe the whole span of
what we call time,
its mountain ranges and its geologic tales,
the reaches and the misses,
what seems to be haphazard,
the careful plans, extensive engineering,
legacies that mark the futures
of many generations,

Maybe in the scheme of things,
all of time is just a small ripped edge,
a narrow line, the space between
the yearning and the “aha”,
desire and its fulfillment,
the longing and the saturating sweetness
of satisfaction

Maybe it doesn’t matter at all
if something was instant
or took a long, long time,
in the scheme of what we are,
the truth of what we’ve always been.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 18, 2016

Moments

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canal through leaves

Those moments
wanted to translate themselves
into dreams, wanted to be
buoyant floating in delicious water
and amazed soaring
through suddenly supportive air

They wanted to be
the supreme comfort of offering solace,
for indeed they were that —
they were the clarity seen through tears,
the contact point wherein
our eyes receive each other

The sense of being held
fully as long as is needed,
the fact that people can sometimes be symbols
for something much deeper,
much more desired,
than their circumscribed lives
can offer. They can represent
the truth — the one thing someone
just at that time
most needed to know.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 16, 2016

Splendor

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sunny meadow

A day this splendid
deserves a big idea,
one you can pick up
by grasping anything
and following along the chain of life
until you have the whole of it

The dance, for example,
of leaves in the breeze —
its connection to sun-impelled currents
(heat rising, cool air swooping in)
and to the limbs, supple with water,
bending to wind and light,
and the thought shimmer
that comes from watching

Or the certain conviction
that everything, everything,
is the thought of one Mind,
moved by the same desire,
born to love every tendril,
every flicker, of life, of light,
born to bring its gifts
in gratitude and brilliance
to the day.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 15, 2016

Alignment

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katama morning

After the tentative approaches
we slip into comfort
sleek as magnets
finding their close alignment

From here on it’s easy
to enter our connection,
easy to feel how our colors
have blended together,
easy to notice other touch points
of our proximity

The city, of course, is spiritual,
the I Am in which we always dwell,
which holds us in perpetual peace,
receptive vessels of constant blessing

We meet each other here
because it is the only place
where we can really touch each other,
the only place
where we can truly be ourselves,
the only place where our embrace
is ordained,
ultimately, the only place we live

We slip into a comfort
that regenerates
and fortifies us
for the work at hand,
we walk forth
never leaving the holy city,
so we bless the land.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 14, 2016

Golden Gardens, Early

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Golden Gardens

Curl of the beach,
curl of the bay,
straight line of curling waves,
low tide, the luring smell of sea,
the counter-swirl of clouds

We sit in our cove of freedom,
togetherness, this time of morning —
ideas performing like kingfishers,
jokes like crows,
punctuate the smooth spread
of the light we are offered,
the wide expanse of reflection

We could make a life
out of moments like this,
memories of doing free flight,
whole-bodied knowing,
saturation of understanding
washing us to the cusp of communion

Heat rises from the dry sand
as we walk back,
trees stand as keepers
of the temple of deep shade,
bestowing their blessing upon us
as we depart.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 13, 2016

Alone, and Not

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duck in sun

In your grief and sorrow
you will be alone,
the touch of others
felt through a caul

When you meet your maker
you will be alone —
the magnitude of that encounter
eclipsing other presence

How you choose your death
is not a thing you’d tell anyone,
even if you knew to do so.
In that narrow passage
you will be alone

In the breaking to awakening
you are not alone,
tumbles of bright choruses
fill you from within
and the reverberation of you
sings its essential harmony
in the reunion of everyone

On the other side
we are not alone anymore.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 11, 2016

Sights and Sounds at the Early Lake

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gray morning lake

The morning’s gray whisper,
the limpid rays of reflected light
straying across the quiet water,
soft folds against the shore

The puncture of dog bark,
the rip of plane engines,
the glide of gulls and ducks,
scrishing footsteps of walkers,
rising of ripples, a chance of rain.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 10, 2016

How We Heal

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Shoreline trees

Some kinds of mending
take place slowly, small pieces
lost for generations
fitting softly into place,
a silent shifting as the frame solidifies,
a quiet sparkling where
one plane of integrity
has been restored

Some healing happens indirectly,
the steady love unfailingly applied
serving to melt a hardness
hidden in some distant corner,
unknown until the wave of freedom
washes through and something moves
that before was frozen

Some healing appears suddenly
when all the inner matrices
have finally aligned
and the light floods
through the whole being,
through the whole history,
across the whole landscape,
across all time.

 

Tumble Love

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Greenlake stick

(a bicycle epiphany)

I carried the heavy baggage
through most of the ride,
considered the balance
of expectations, deliveries,
considered the relative merit
of what we must have thought
were our positions

Considered how to hold the slight —
to be indignant, to be chastened
(while the almost rain, the dull damp,
did nothing to alleviate my state)

I shuffled around those
anxieties, justifications,
all the long words with edges
that poke out, the carrying of which
makes me awkward

Till suddenly I realized
they can all just fall away
in a tumble love that feels
warm and roly about everyone,
that gathers them in like soft puppies,
delighting in my surrender
to their charms.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 8, 2016