Seeing the Salvation

under oak

Stand still, for you won’t need
to fight in this battle. Not this one.
For your perception
will be lifted up. And none of the triggers
will even register

You will see that your work is
to stand clear in the Allness —
the comprehensive Love that buffers
each collision course with kindness,
makes each intersection blessed,
each impact blessing

You won’t need to fight in this battle.
Stand still, and let your view expand
until you see the circle’s sweet return,
until you hold the whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 18, 2015

Spring Comes

spring comes

It may seem chaotic
but there is one force pulling us all
And the intelligence
with which we’re all connected
can accommodate
every single need

This grand dance goes on
in every scale of size —
within the galaxies of molecules
and in the tensile tug of stars

And we can feel it
in the way we slide together
and the kinetic transfer
of exhilaration

We can feel it in the stillness
where the interlocking circles
find perfect balance
all along the endless chain of life.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 17, 2015

Solace and Comfort

lower stream

Ah, we pin our hopes on each other,
we reach out our hands
as if two bodies in free fall
could hold each other up

We will give solace
and we will receive comfort
but not from here —

Not where we set up the slate of conditions,
the changes required, the needs to be met,
Not in the stories that cast us so poignantly
into the dramas that make people cry

We will give solace
and receive comfort
here in the consciousness
deeper than stories,
where everyone wants the same thing —
A thing whose abundance
is never diminished,
a source whose beneficence
comforts us all.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 15, 2015

Walking the Land

beloved land

Other people have loved this land before.
Signs of their presence,
in leaning posts and rusted fence wire
are unmistakable. And in the fact
that this is pasture — grass
must have been mowed last year

But something else calls out —
an echo of my footfalls,
generations old, perhaps,
And how this love that rises
from the land
must have captured others

They must have felt held,
just like this, in the sun, the air,
the solitude
and the quiet endurance
of all things living,
all these things that wait
for our full return.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 14, 2015

Wooden Nickels

Bracketts winter

A friend remembers, as a child,
she once tried to give a wooden nickel
to a blind girl.
She doesn’t know why she thought
it would be fun to fool her

The blind girl was indignant,
for of course she knew,
as would we all be,
as do we all

And yet it seems so often
we try to give them to each other —
smiles without light behind them,
words without truth,
touch without
reverberation, overlap of waves,
and the profound fulfillment
of harmonic tones

We’ve been taught to pretend to be fooled
but no one ever really is:
We all sense,
at least a little,
what it is we want,
what we need to give.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 12, 2015

When You Know Who You Are

Edward in Marcola2

You get refocused on the inside —
All the vectors realigned,
the causes reconceived,
a subtle but essential shifting
where all your elements
fit better, settle

And in the new-felt points of contact
a surprise thrill —
Enough to power
all the things you suddenly
can see you’re here to do,
enough to light your flare
so others see you
and you see them, too.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 11, 2015

Body of Movement

Wendy in tree2

Consider my body
and how it moves —
the reach and balance points,
the arcs extended
through my spine, my limbs —
consider how it spins
and how it leans and stretches

There is no moment
when it is not made of motion.
Even at its most still,
the counterpoints of rise and fall,
of soft and taut
are what define it

It’s not a mass of matter
waiting to be activated.
It’s not comprised of elements
that might move.

It is the actual movement
as clearly defined by my thought
as the vortex form
is governed by its rippling imperative —
cohesion of the liquid
and the gravity that draws it
and the honored channels
through which it flows

My body is like that —
transparent, wave formed,
kinetic,
whirling through the dance
of present tense.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 11, 2015

photo by Edward Mulhern

Light On The Page

wetlands2

Somewhere in between the printed words
I find myself in the velvet place
where secrets are imparted
as quietly as dew lifting

And the awareness
spreads like color
across sun-brightened fields
and joy —
like the spring trilling
of many tiny birds

So these are the promises
and this is how they are fulfilled —
in the soft silence
of becoming new.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 9, 2015

Life Work

wetland rose hips

I start to see
my life is more
than finding ways to feel fulfilled,
more than arranging energies,
emotions, thoughts, and movement,
metabolism, focus for my days,
more than finding ways to feel OK

I was made to bear fruit.
My life feels good when,
in essential interaction,
I engage cooperation
with the life around me
and we all thrive

My life is working
when Life’s work
is manifest in me —
The works define
what I’m meant to be.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 8, 2015