Each day I live
is as dependent
on my activity
as is a fountain’s form,
whose dancing plumes
are only seen
so long as it keeps flowing
No grand success of yesterday
saves me from today,
no revelation
releases me from this day’s need
for my salvation
I fail, I fail each day
until I seek my source
which, rising up through me
along its natural course
achieves with ease
what I could not, by will or force,
comprising me for now and ever more.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 25, 2014
You are not held hostage
to the god of blight,
the god of dread and loneliness,
the one who says you are unworthy
When you are set free
There’s one imperative:
Don’t bow down to any law but good
Your goodness
and the blessedness of everything
is the one thing to hold to —
That will make you feel
cozy in the darkness
and golden in the light,
impervious to all incursions
on your inner fire,
inspired by the steadiness
of Life’s care.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 24, 2014
I want to be astonished,
want to feel
something I couldn’t have expected,
want that awakening
into the sense that I’m
not in control, as I thought,
that some force much larger than me
is shown to have held the reins all along
so that all my assessments dissolve
Not that I crave helplessness
or even being overpowered
for its own sake,
Just that I want to be in awe
For awe impels my growth
into something I only faintly sense,
deeper and older than hope,
some destiny
worthy of my whole soul.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 23, 2014
They were tired of living on a set,
Tired of days under electric suns
in houses with cardboard walls
with all their plastic food and friends,
their plastic props, their plastic topics
They found themselves longing for loam
with its uncompromising scent,
and wood fire — how these things
cling to your skin and get inside your dreams —
for true work and true harvest
And ways of moving with the land
that leave little need for words,
and no time to worry at
nit-picky issues of their egos
and their relationships —
Finding their unity and their identities
in concert with the present forces
and today’s insistent needs,
the smell of leaves and rain
and the sweet falling to rest
at day’s end.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 22, 2014
I tried to mend the space
my knife eyes had slashed to ribbons
in their tense sweeping arcs
across the room
I soaked it in the russet soup
that floats behind closed eyes,
gave it permission to dissolve
and then re-form
The traffic ribbon cut,
in torturous red
through my psyche,
slow, intractable. I couldn’t
leave it
I tied a bow around my hopes and plans
and left them, only too aware
that any conscious effort on my part
to bring them to fruition
would have to fail.
I left them to be met
by some life force
larger and more precise
than my fumbling hands.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 21, 2014
My lyric body dances on sound,
Skips along the logs at Richmond Beach,
Leans into the lift of wind,
Sings the tunes that rise up in response
This is the flow
of joy-impelled intent
which moves to celebrate the balances
of all that breathes in concert with the day
and all the ways it touches
and is touched
This is not the mechanism
I was taught was me,
nor yet a chassis I inhabit —
This is the one that flies in dreams
and also here, perhaps,
in the rich euphoria
spanning all my arcs,
connecting me.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 20, 2014
We find that people
will heatedly defend
their right to be enslaved,
will boast of how much power
their enslaver has, compared to others,
how thoroughly they make them suffer,
how everyone should rightly
be subject to the same
We find that these
will not take kindly
to suggestions that they could be free
When this occurs,
go softly —
You’ll win no cases arguing against them.
Sit them down. Wash their feet.
Let them feel the gentleness
of your caress.
Let their toes —
just their toes at first —
stretch tender into freedom.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 19, 2014
We left our masks at the door —
Masks of norms, masks of respectability,
Each mask stamped from one of several molds
So each of us seemed one of many
We left our cloaks at the door —
Cloaks that hid
our light-charged ascent,
our streaming brilliance,
our quick-electric connecting essence
And we abandoned all our static stories —
Histories that marked our limits,
all the tags, the terms, the titles
all that would excuse, explain
why we were so hemmed in
And all the habits,
all the ways we framed ourselves
(and had been framed)
all the things we named ourselves
(or how we’d been misnamed)
everything we had condemned,
self-condemnation, too —
We left all that behind
when we went through.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 18, 2014
I give thanks
for the layers of dawning,
after dream,
in which the worry lifts, the nagging
sense of needing, somehow,
to confront the problem.
Even quite some time after
I’m well awake, another wave
will wash me — wave of relief —
for there is nothing
I need to do to solve this.
I let myself forget —
It’s easy, really,
as the dimensions of the day
crowd out the linear projections
that scratched at my perception
through the night.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 17, 2014
We’ve all spent many weary years
playing “mother may I” to the myth of money.
It’s time to stop.
Who puts a value on our life force?
On our creative impulses and actions?
Who puts a value on our love,
or on our skill, our care, our rapt attention?
Who says we have no value
except what we can monetize?
Each one of us is infinite,
Each has the power to bless,
Each one is worthy of the things we need
to keep us satisfied and well
We have the power
to draw our own true web
to join us hand in hand across the earth.
We don’t need money systems to sustain us,
for that which gives us life
gives us our worth.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 16, 2014