Hold me and swing
Let us engage
the elemental forces,
Let us harness
the power of gravity
to catapult ourselves
(slingshot around a planet
and on till morning)
Lean in to me
Let us notice
the power of support
to make us feel strong and included,
to make us feel valued and needed
It’s no great virtue
to walk alone —
It doesn’t tap the half of us,
our grand capacity
to wield the magic of connection,
to launch each other upwards into flight.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 22, 2014
The size of the arc,
the span of life,
makes no difference
Sparks flittingly ascending,
stars ponderously wheeling
ancient pools, water-carved in rock,
a mushroom chalice
All these things
live equally intensely
through the exclamation of their being
All these things
can take you with them
All they require
is your seeing
©Wendy Mulhern
October 21, 2014
Well, dying, after all, is no big deal —
People do it all the time
It is the logical conclusion
of the primal lie
that says you can’t have
that which you most want,
that says you have to suffer,
that says you have to settle,
that says you really don’t deserve
to be the essence of yourself,
which, when realized,
brings unremitting joy
It is the lie that holds us in captivity,
Captivity which always
assigns another tyrant.
keeps us struggling in servitude,
as long as we believe it,
with bouts of high stakes cat and mouse
played with despair
The slow or sudden pain of this
brings us towards death
(No living thing endures without its freedom)
We will choose to go there too
until the moment we become convinced
the lie has never owned us
And our own truth bears us witness
that life has boundless rounds of joy to give,
That it’s our true calling
to be our wild selves fully
and then we know
we shall not die, but live.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 20, 2014
Crows going home
rise like loosed leaves
between the trees,
lifted as if blown
taking a free ride on the elements,
moving together in clan familiarity
Jovial caws speaking of evening
interrupt the reverie
from time to time,
counteract the sense
of wind being the only force
now that the last sun kiss
has left the sky.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 19, 2014
No one can give you
what you most need,
No one can take it away
All of the agonies
trying to gain it,
bargaining for it,
hope and despair,
All of the stories
lamenting the missing it,
All of the sorries,
good bye, don’t care . . .
All these will fall away
empty and weightless,
replaced with the clarity
true all along:
What you most need
has always been with you,
steady through all of those doors —
Tell me the riddle
and how you have answered it,
Now that you own what is yours.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 18, 2014
There is a time of launching
and a time of waiting . . .
There’s a rhythm here
I need to learn to master
Quiet music and a night in
with the two men of my household
(one reading, one dozing)
may help me ease into release,
the resting, falling segment
of the cycle,
the homeward downhill coast
which takes the gathered energy
and forms it deftly
into what its hopes directed it to be
So I can wait for it,
the effort done,
for gravity will take my work
and bring it home.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 17, 2014
Picture: Articulated Tsunami Vessel on base, by Jennifer McCurdy. Photo by Gary Mirando
The day, already splendid,
increased its level of benevolence
with the braided glow
of rippled sun reflections
patterned by gulls and geese
in intersecting circles
and in looping Vs
And with a toddler’s foreign language,
the newness of his speech
the only thing that I could understand
And with the ease of afternoon
that spilled into the evening —
mid-October
and still not cold.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 16, 2014
In this room with the rain outside,
the quiet rain, the peaceful rain,
In this room with rain outside,
the dark and isolating rain,
I gaze upon the paucity
of my day’s array
No plans for visits
and no compelling projects,
no urgent chores, no pressing obligations,
No reason not to feel the day’s enriching joy,
no easy avenue to find it
This I know:
My life is not comprised of my to-do lists.
This I know too:
Everything that can be present is,
and nothing that’s not present now
can ever be
So though the rain may hold me back
from some pursuits,
The day will still deliver its bright fruits.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 15, 2014
I try to make sense of things,
I weary of mazes,
My mind keeps running them anyway —
What someone might have thought,
What I did and said, and still could say
I let it go
I pick it up again
Must be a cultural chasm
with no good way to understand —
There can be several explanations
all of which make someone wrong,
There must be some way
to put my mind at rest —
I try to gather us,
I try to see us all as blessed
It comes in moments
It comes in images I feel
Where I’m empowered,
Where I can fly with what is real,
Where I can swoop along the shimmers
on the rising face of waves
And I can see the way we can connect
Not in negotiations, expectations,
Not in how our lives should intersect,
Not in what we owe or what we earn
but in the sense of home
to which we all return.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 13, 2014
We don’t make the sun rise
but it does
We don’t engineer
the seasons’ changing,
And even our internal tides —
our breath and circulation —
don’t depend on our arranging
(Pay attention, oh me of little faith!)
In the splendor of the rolling days,
the mist, the clouds’ drift,
the uplift of leaves driven by wind,
In the gentle hand of sun-warmth
on the dampened land
there should be evidence enough
This life of mine,
more vast than I can comprehend,
is held in order
by a force beyond my own
and all the flights I dream and yearn for
are established
not by my efforts
but by my essence,
not by me
but by the Love that holds us all.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 12, 2014