Author Archives: Wendy

Redemption

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morning fog, Marcola

When scales fall from my eyes
day after day,
When I see with new light,
When I see how many of my constructs
have been wrong (all of them, really)
Should I be surprised that gratitude
grows as easily out of tears
as green blades after rain?

However justly I may have earned
all the isolation in my life
(however weird I was, and blind, and gross)
there is redemption:

None of us has ever owned
anything to cast us from the circle.
None of the condemnations ever
had any truth. None of us
deserve (nor have we ever)
to be anything but celebrated, loved.

There’s no account I need to go and settle,
no debts, no currency of wrongs,
no need to reconstruct an altered story —
I forgive myself, and everyone,
and wake to home.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 6, 2015

Community

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Oak in spring

We come eager
we come ready
we come expecting to be surprised
We never know
which of our gifts
will make that key connection
that catapults us into vaster realms

We know that something
we haven’t fathomed,
some gift another brings,
some unseen part
will find a way to liberate our vision,
ignite the latent radiance of our hearts

And so we shed our plans and our projections,
come open handed, with no words in mind,
to let our gifts spring forth to meet each other,
hands and hearts so gratefully entwined.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 6, 2015

Uplifted

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Yachats seaweed

Lift me gently
as rising tide
lifts seaweed in tide pools
so their strands can float freely
and wave in the current
untangled, unmatted
in shimmering softness
drinking the sun through the water

Lift me gently
supporting the whole of me,
letting me move in the sweet understanding
that I am upheld
and don’t need to hold myself up —
All that I am
swims delighted in you.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 4, 2015

Weathered

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view from hill

The sun scorches us
The wind dries us
We only notice on the edges
of our work and our wonder

The brambles trip and prick us,
Some insects bite —
We carry all these things
with a nascent understanding
of how we are owned by this land
and how our love emerges
as we are eroded,
how in this weathering
we become capable,
in this honing
we become something different —
More of the earth, less of the city,
closer to both the land and the sky.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 3, 2015

Evening in Marcola

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The sun goes down without coloring,
as confident as it came up,
its gold still shimmering
as shadows rise in the grass,
gracing the underwings of evening birds
and whole bodies
of myriad insects

The hills behind which it dips
are already somber,
the fields are hastening
to join the visual hush
the air cools quickly
when the sun retires,
bird song continues
on into the dusk.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 2, 2015

Escape

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We are marvelous creatures
and our instincts are unerring —
See how we fall like water,
see how we follow the veins of continuity
that still flow through the rubble
of our chopped up lives

See how we leave the lies
that said these broken stones
were natural, that the meaning
of our lives is to collect them,
pile them together
in some kind of race
to be someone with a complete structure

We sink beneath the stones,
We find what flows,
We find what holds together,
We find the land
So we escape to find ourselves
no longer partial,
no longer fractured, disconnected,
no longer severed from ourselves —
So we stretch out in how we know
that we are whole.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 1, 2015

Heaviness

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whidbey beach driftwood

Ah, what have you shouldered?
— Put it down —
What have you swallowed?
— Spit it out —

At this time of heaviness,
in this time of lies,
In the face of revolution
or worse, suffocation
The one thing that is needed
is not for you to go down
(though the depths cry out, cry out,
though something calling itself conscience
demands your howling)

The one thing that is needed
is for you to demonstrate
(if only to yourself)
the survival move of shrugging off the weight
and letting the afflatus
bear you to the surface,
letting the stillness
radiate,
letting your truth
rise.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 28, 2015

Permeated

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horsechestnut blooms2

Love touches every surface
as eagerly as water seeping
into soil, finding each tiny crevice
and filling it suddenly

Love goes in infinitely small,
embracing every grain of thought,
of being. The intimacy of being known
closer than I ever could imagine,
of knowing something by the way
it touches me
opens me out
like a chestnut frond —
so much unfolding
from one little bud.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 27, 2015

Enemies

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twin ponds shadow

We looked around for the enemy
but all we could see
were faces wanting to be loved —
some with glints of longing,
some with aching hope,
some afraid to even
look up and see

No one was standing
with bared teeth
waiting to devour
or in the inscrutable ice
that blandly wields a pen
to steal the lives of millions

Instead we saw the power
that kindles kinship from afar,
that brings each one back
from dim benighted stances

We saw the incredulous
but then willing
dropping of forms,
of roles, of strictures —
we saw the relief,
grateful and repentant
of coming home.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 25, 2015

Teachings

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three crows

“They shall teach no more every man his neighbor saying ‘know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, saith the Lord.”

We shall not teach
the steps for finding goodness:
try this diet, exercise or meditation,
renounce your ego to become enlightened,
adopt these habits of communication,
release your fears, embrace your shadow

We won’t be offering
all those helpful paths
to fix yourself, to heal your life
to find out who you really are

Because you’ll know.
We all will, from the inside.
We’ll know the bright joy
that springs up within
permeating everything
bringing forth dynamic understanding
opening the infinite dimensions
of what we see we’ve always known we are.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 24, 2015