Author Archives: Wendy

After Steeping Myself in the Work of Poets of Renown

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poets

Well, I may aspire
to something more exotic,
may wish to drift through mist
and leave behind some trace scent,
not quite definable

May wish to leave you feeling
here was something subtle and profound —
It moved me, though I can’t tell
what it is . . .

But at this time, it seems my pattern
is more earthbound —
My words roll and clatter
along the tracks my thoughts made
in oft repeated play

If I try to make them
say something important
They get much worse.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 15, 2014

The Scope of Us

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elm3

You and I,
We’re not the tokens
on this game board of dream
that we call life

We’re not the hands
that move the pieces,
We’re not the minds
that move the hands

We are so much more!
We are the whole frame,
the whole sphere,
out to the edge of what we say
our consciousness perceives

We are that presence
and we can govern it —
Not in manipulation
of all the parts
but in surrendering
to that great harmony
that knows and loves completely,
that moves us all.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 14, 2014

Unsaid

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unsaid

Things go unsaid
in little layers of awkwardness
between the places
where bridges could be stretched
across the chasm of our doubts

Things go unsaid
while we explain —
explain away the need,
in that moment
to be heard and seen
and then it’s gone

And we are left with
all the stories we will forge
of how it didn’t matter anyway
or how it’s better
that we didn’t speak

And so we drift away,
connection lost
in the superficial chatter
that we use to paper over
things that go unsaid.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 13, 2014

Weight

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weight

After the rain
while the summer air
still hangs heavy,
some little birds break through its shroud
with happy chattering

A slight aliveness of breeze
brings the scent of
just a little rain —
wet dust, the smell
at the mouth of garden hoses

The day is still pregnant
and the great unknown
of how the birth will actually occur
stretches its vast belly
over everything.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 12, 2014

Hope Sandwich (on desperation toast)

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hope sandwich

The grid has shaped us broken —
We find our angled edges only fit
with others who are similarly maimed.
We cry out in our pain and our frustration
and find our cries just shape more of the same

We try to think of starting over,
Try to see a way
to pattern something new,
But all our edges dig into the injured soil,
compact it more, erode it, stir up dust

There is a river,
There is another way,
There still are headlands that are wild.
We need to find those headlands
in our minds —
That’s where we start,
That’s where we stay

It’s not so much a work of starting over
(These trees are here, they’ve grown for years)
So much as moving now
along our truer channels
thus reinforcing all the good that’s here

But now it’s time to cry —
Cry tears, cry out —
anything to be less stuck, less dry.
With all my voice that’s left, this shout
for help. I can’t do this alone.
. . . And so to wait, until direction comes.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 11, 2014

On the McKenzie

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Morning sings through the river,
Sun penetrates the moving water,
blessing all the river stones beneath it,
Otter swims upstream, osprey wheels above,
Light dances in the ripples

Sun on cedar evokes its perfume,
on apple trees, incites the juice
to flow into the waiting, glowing orbs,
Insects flit about their constant business
thrumming to the morning’s tune.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 9, 2014

Volatility

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volatility1

Perspective changes
like molten lava
flowing out of the middle of itself,
entrancing, ever moving

And almost frantically
we throw our stories
on the shapes,
try to define them,
try to find a narrative
that can explain
how we came to feel
so volatile — hot and liquid and
so rapidly falling
to fill the space before us

till it’s gone
and we feel set in stone,
for a while,
until the winds of story
start to blow upon our forms
and break them down.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 7, 2014

Battleground

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regret-battle

I’ve been doing battle with you
all day, in my mind.
I force myself to stop
and then I notice
I’ve been at it again

I don’t want to fight this battle —
I want it to turn out to be
a non-issue, want to find
that an inner voice
has whispered to you softly,
convinced you in a way I never could

I want to pay attention
to my own battle,
where I need to stand up
against insinuations
that I could be justified
in thinking I am right and you are wrong,

since in the final resolution,
when my mind picture of you
sees you innocent,
I won’t need to fight with you at all.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 6, 2014

Soul Repair

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soul repair1

We don’t need
many sizes of patches
for all the holes in people’s psyches,
all the rips and rifts,
the things that they may hold
now in their bodies,
that make them stiff,
that make them limp

We don’t need to figure out what’s wrong
so we can mend it, don’t need
to set them on a course of self-correction

No. We only need
to shine a tender light
on the tender bright
place of their regeneration —
what can image them new,
image them free.
That will fill in all the holes
with its abundant suppleness,
with its effulgent strength.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 5, 2014

Climb

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climb

I was walking looking backward
because my work was beautiful
and my friends were beautiful
and oh, my love was beautiful
and I didn’t want to leave them

But there are turns along this path
and footsteps that require my attention,
There is so much to keep learning —
Things I don’t even have names for, yet

So I will look forward, and trust
that love and friendship,
like the moon,
will still preside over my days
and not be lost
around the many bends ahead.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 4, 2014