Spring is pale here,
and though the weather swings
from cold to warm to cold,
the buds have ventured out,
as startling as katydids —
the revealed preparation
of all those tiny leaves
lined up,
now throwing off
their hard, sleek, sheathes,
ready to expand
with a rapidity
that’s almost alarming —
all those precise pleats and points
starting to unfold,
ready to fill the tree,
tender but unstoppable
like millennials
stretching out
into their lives.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 12, 2014

Photo by Heather Mulhern

OK. Breathe deep.
Sigh of release.

Back from the surge of exertion
fall
the elements of me —
falling to rest,
falling to quiet.

In a while there will be little stirs —
What has this meant?
How have I changed?
(though for now I’m less than eager
to inquire)

Maybe who I am
is the feeling of the movement
and of the stillness,
not as a form that moved and stopped
but as the impulse
in and of itself,
as active in the stillness as the racing,
as undescribed as waves
thundering home.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 6, 2014

The deftness required
in this case
comes from having nothing —
nothing preset, no opinions,
nothing pent up in emotion,
no beliefs, no sacred cows,
nothing to trigger.

But who can possibly do that?
— Water can do that,
Ever insistent in its fluid weight
and how it moves
as fast as thought
to its deepest level

And you can move like water
to be at the right place
in the right time
with the right mirror,
taking your form from the moment,
your essence ever unchanged.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 1, 2014