Lack of a stream bed
will not stop water
from flowing down
Lack of a plan
will not stop love
from carving its way
through and around
every obstacle
Lack of lessons
will not stop dance
from cleaving to the music,
moving bodies in ways they hadn’t thought of,
hadn’t known they could
And no tale
of loss, of separation
can stop the full expression,
intricate and bold,
of everything you are
from shining forth.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 12, 2015
People may wonder
about your story —
That is the way of things in this world
People may speculate,
may use their conclusions
to readjust their sense
of how things stand.
People may wonder, or they may not
In any case, know that,
whatever they conclude,
it has nothing to do with you.
Whatever construct they may form
will be related far more to their own story
than to yours (accuracy being irrelevant
to the art of shoring up positions)
Some people may speculate,
Others will reach out —
that is something different:
Take their hands — in that connection
there is something real.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 12, 2015
Please forgive me —
all this time I have imagined
each of these as form-bound,
limited in viewpoint and potential,
minds of size to fit within.
I have misjudged them.
Each of them is portal to infinity,
each a representative
of that grand impulse
that sounds the stars, that
sends the waters cycling
in such exultant waves of thundering power
that everything rejoices
Each of these is made
to deliver the precisely needed blessing
in that moment where our circles intersect.
In that interaction,
we are made whole.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 10, 2015
On many days
progress proceeds unseen —
It isn’t time so much that’s needed
as the orderly placement
of each element in sequence
in a patient pace,
a laying down of layers:
“Aha”s that lead to new perspectives,
ways of seeing bringing ways of acting,
ways of acting bringing new responses,
so precipitating new perceptions,
which in turn bring new “aha”s
Eventually a clarity emerges,
a hope is met,
the work is done.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 9, 2015
In graceful ways we start to learn
the things we need to know—
sovereignty, surrender,
how the two go hand in hand:
we surrender our enslavement
to be sovereign
And though it seems, at times,
like a hard, hard choice
(because we clung so long to this?
because we didn’t know another way?)
we get to make it
in little increments,
tiny pebbles dislodged from the facade
that had encased us,
till the whole thing crumbles down
and we find
that we can move
in ways we thought we only maybe dreamed
We can stretch out,
we can expand
so far beyond the former surface,
gracefully,
for this is ours to own.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 7, 2015
Every last worry can leave —
they can dissipate
like soft fizzy bubbles
rising from your head
You can feel a great stillness
after they’re gone,
a pool of limpid water
full of sky
So you taste the depth,
the vast expanse
of that which you reflect
and you begin to sense
your purpose
This is like
sweet rising chords
endlessly echoing,
touching the fundamental frequency
of earth’s lowest tones,
completing the circle
of Life’s timeless song.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 6, 2015
The fact that I wrote something
doesn’t mean I really know it,
and even when I feel
within my deepest core
(Lord, I believe)
something is true,
it doesn’t mean I really understand
But coming round again and again,
things start to get clearer
(help thou mine unbelief)
and eventually the swollen, writhing tail
must cease to sweep away the stars,
must fall, jellied and lifeless
as a tail a lizard lost,
before the hand of Truth.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 5, 2015
The way through
will never be
what we were told it was.
This is a truth
known by storytellers
and by anyone who,
in rebellion or in great anguish,
leaves the rules behind,
the map, too,
and loses herself
in the present communion
with the true terrain —
every ridge and gully,
every rock formation,
the sharp and the smooth,
the solid, the crumbling,
and the requirements
of each footfall
For it is only these steps,
singular and stumbling
that gain the beloved land.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 4, 2015
No, I will not dip one toe
into the roil of fear —
I know how it could take me,
throw me off balance,
spin me under, with its fiercening demands
and not deliver me
(the way that it had promised)
to the other side —
It can’t be forded
and I can’t afford it
I will ride instead
along the winds of peace,
the billowing uplift
that holds my soul
in tender balance,
that fills my heart,
gradual as the dawn,
with the clear perception
that all is well.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 3, 2015
Truth is too big
to have a brand,
Truth is too big
to be packaged.
Truth is far bigger
than any versus — mine vs. yours,
ours vs. theirs
Every sense of truth
that wars against another’s
is like a small person
throwing dried peas
against a window —
the insignificant ptick ptick
will have no impact
There will be no time even
to call them to justice —
They will be swept away
like so much flotsam
And the clean rush
of the Truth that is One
will cover everything —
that will be enough.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 1, 2015