Living

four hands

We abandon the paper cut-outs
and start to work with the real thing:

The dimensions are astonishing —
we could take years just reveling
in these curves, these planes, these hollows

to say nothing of movement
and that amazing contiguity
that remains itself while changing form
minutely and infinitely, the very breathing of it,
let alone the leaps and curls
and then there is the blessed heat,
the contact
and the wind-engendering spins

This has nothing to do
with where we were playing before.
Our hearts race to be here,
we keep waking up, more and more.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 25, 2015

Standard

field flower

It doesn’t matter what your demons are.
Demons are not a factor in the work.
It doesn’t matter who has told you
for however long
that you’re not worthy

It doesn’t matter
what your regimens have been,
how you have marshaled all your forces,
whether you succeeded,
how you failed

This one thing
is revealed to you
beneath all that,
for once not requiring of you
any kind of change,
for once not measuring you
against any standard
except yourself,
to which you stand exactly
as you were made to be —
so loved, so celebrated,
so ineffably perfect
at being who you are.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 24, 2015

Simply

2012-07-14 river

This love was always
such a simple thing —
love of your bones, your limbs,
your snuggle, your warm, heavy head

How could I fail so utterly
to know my only duty
was to pass that love still gleaming,
my bone to yours, shiny and smooth,
clear, unequivocal,
holy and pure?

Here is my prayer —
in your presence to see
that this crucial transmission
has always been given,
with joy to perceive
that you’ve always received it,
it never depended on me.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 23, 2015

My Poetry

Edward paces

I wanted to tell you this morning
that each time I write a poem
with you in it,
each time you have shared
what was in my heart,
in my mind,
you are more present
in the landscape of my being,
in the circuit of my thoughts

When you receive my poems
you have received a gift of me
so that I hold you
in gratitude, in inner company —
I keep the thought of you
as treasure,
more for every time
that, through my poetry,
I feel I have been seen.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 22, 2015

Grounded

Grounded

If you are lost,
if in your story
you are missing
pieces of yourself —
perhaps your peace,
perhaps your groundedness —
if in your story
you are waiting to be saved

Look now, for in this very afternoon
where breezes chase each other
through grasses and daisies,
The ground holds everything.

It holds you as well,
infusing your feet
with all the power you need,
spreading the strength
of the whole earth
into the heart of your presence.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 21, 2015

Glow

glowSmall insects are allowed
as is the busy hum
they make as a collective

Sparrow songs are welcome
as is the breeze, and the smell
of fresh scythed grass

The afternoon had a pause in it
which I only notice
now that the birdsong has resumed,
now that the sifting sun
has softened
and granted golden robes
to green undergrowth
so it glows royal
in the swift procession
towards sunset.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 18, 2015

Mourning Time

Oak Bluffs sunrise

I need the blessing
for those that mourn.
I mourn for something nameless
that cries in you
but won’t explain itself

I mourn for the chasm,
for the absent bridge,
I mourn for anything
I might have done or failed to do
to close the gap or span it,
I mourn the self-fulfillment
of a persistent dread

This healing is not
something I can do by sleight of thought.
This healing requires something ancient, timeless‚
the truth about you and me
that existed
before the world was framed,
the love that asserts itself,
flooding out the lie of pain.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 16, 2015

Picking Raspberries

raspberries2

Picking raspberries, I consider
that writing poems is just like this sometimes —
There’s sight involved, but picking
comes down to touch most often —
a gentle grasp that doesn’t bruise the berries,
just firm enough to pull them off,
and knowing to desist if they resist too much,
to wait another day until they ripen

I stoop down to peer beneath the leaves
and spot the hanging red,
then my hand goes in almost blind
to feel if it is ready and to pick it if it is.
Some berries fall apart in my hand,
some years, some are mushy
(but not this crop)
We’ll tend them well to keep them plump

With poems I do the same thing,
with the initial spark, with words,
with images —
I move focused along the canes
and fill my basket.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 15, 2015

Out of the Fray

surviving cedar2

Things can spring apart,
blocks burst loose and tumble —
there can be rubble,
and all the places
things used to fit
can be obliterated

You can have a sense of
no order, no place
to put anything, no place
to sit down even,
no rest for the insistent
and erratic
loopings of your mind

You can call it
a waste howling wilderness,
and that may be a clue

For everything that matters to you
is held where nothing that can fall apart
will touch it.
Its inviolability is proof
of what’s real,
its presence
what will lead you
all the way out of the fray
and on to sweet abiding peace.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 14, 2015

A Love Poem

Baxter wood

I will see you,
I will see your hopes and your desires

I will see your fears
and what will assuage them

I will see your secret boxes
and the treasure glowing through
their breathing walls

They will become transparent —
I will see what’s growing in them
and how, through whatever
old protective thicket,
they find their way out.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 13, 2015