Author Archives: Wendy

Memory bramble trail

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I need to know you feel OK with me, he says,
I need to know you’re happy with your choice.
Yes, yes, because we’ve come to here, I say,
Where every moment gets new eyes, new voice.

We can pull up memories
but there’s no need
to re-inhabit the old regrets,
No need to replay
the stings of old injustices,
misunderstandings,
ways we were inept

Even through all those awkward years
There shines a beauty,
there shines a joy —
There were great rays of grace,
great leaps of skill,
great bursts of pleasure
that we carry still

So we can walk easily
down the last hill toward home
in the quiet present
of the falling dusk
We can be happy
in who we are,
We can be solid
in our deep trust.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 20, 2014

Sometimes it’s enough

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rev end

Sometimes it’s very clear
that we have what we need
right here, in this house,
with the rain outside
and cherry blossom petals
blowing in the wind
and drifting on the ground

Sometimes it’s a great gift
when sun breaks through towards evening
and we go outside
to walk against the wind
and see the brilliant leaves
in myriad spring greens
against the sky

And small wrens whistle
quiet in the branches of the conifers,
and you go barefoot
so the therapeutic earth
can send its cold connections
up your spine

Sometimes today is enough
to feel the touch of the divine.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 19, 2014

Cycles, Renewal

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renewal waves3

Day’s end, week’s end,
Projects’ projected end,
Cycles of synchronization —
We come around, begin again,
continuing creation

We graduate, we start anew,
We find new work, we gain new views,
Things come around,
Our roots reach out in darkness
for fertile ground

This day is poised, like swelling waves,
before the crest,
We wait to feel the crashing curl —
this moment’s test

This is the tumble
where we know for sure
that we’re alive,
This is the taste of life that feeds us,
This is how we thrive.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 18, 2014

Truth

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truth

Should I be surprised at truth?
How silent it is, and how clear,
How irrefutable, once revealed!
How much it changes everything
while showing, at the same time,
that nothing’s ever changed . . .

I am committed now
and I will seek it,
wait for all that wavers to disperse
while the solid weight of truth
leaves it unmoved
glinting with the infinity
of its depth.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 17, 2014

Progress

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progress

Much of the arc
seeks its course in darkness,
following the force of its curve
without seeing
where or when or if
it will connect —
the imperative of its essence
felt in its presence,
though the full circle
has not been grasped

When it reaches completeness —
touches its own —
and the circuit is closed,
the light is sudden
(This, this is what I am!)
And some things that seemed impossible
can suddenly be done
And the unfathomable
comes brightly clear.
In that moment,
quick as the click of an opening door,
everything changes
and you go through.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 16, 2014

Morning and Evening

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I. Morning

I follow the sounds of your movement —
the wheelbarrow’s melodic trundle,
the slow squeal of the front door;
I feel the track of early sun
through the boughs of Douglas Fir —
the cool, the warm, the cool,
the bright, the more subdued

II. Evening

Now the moon
grows brighter as it rises,
The kettle’s mounting pitch approaches boil,
Piano music warbles on the radio,
The old man sits there — possibly he hears.

And you and I have worked
and we are tired, but satisfied —
The day has held us through its arc
and brought us, whole, to eventide.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 13, 2014

Side by Side

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sidebyside featured

We walk, we work
Side by side,
We sleep against each other,
We strive, each in our own domain,
for mastery

We tell our dreams
Stride by stride,
Give counsel to each other,
We circle in our separate thoughts
and then come back

What images, he asks,
will fill your poem today?
Will it be light through leaves,
bare feet on grass,
thick chocolate at the bottom
of a paper cup?
Could be, I smile, could be —
Throw them all in,
See what comes up.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 13, 2014

Refining

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refining

When you melt
you slip away
from all those stories —
gravity pulls your essence
in a steady stream
of who you are

You flow away
from what you’ve done,
from what you’ve thought you’ve been,
from all those definitions of yourself
imposed by others and by circumstance

Some of those foreign things
go up in ash, some may remain
but you are here now —
your own cohesion
is your new reality

And you will shine
in such a pure reflective gleam
as you’re refined,
as you come clean.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 12, 2014

1001 Poems

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cherry blossoms

The line is a little bit fuzzy, but I have crossed the threshold. Yesterday I published my 1001st post. Which adds up to a few over 1000 poems posted on my blog, since its inception in January 2011.

I feel I should have a celebration of some sort. Days fall softly like blossom petals, laying down a pale and shifting carpet. Poems fall like days, in this discipline of mine. It’s easy enough to not notice a milestone.

I do at times enjoy going back through poems I’ve written, kicking them up like fallen blossoms, finding, often, that they still delight me. And periodically I collect some of them to put into a book.

I’m thinking of having a gathering to celebrate the unnoticed accumulation of a body of work that comes with consistent creative effort — of inviting everyone to stop for a moment and notice what they’ve created, and have us celebrate together. Contact me if you think it’s a good idea . . .

Wishing you all much joy in your creative endeavors —

—Wendy

The Price

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wet screen

This garden tending
is not a facile thing —
The easy steps
are undermined
by tough complexities:
Slugs decapitate my seedlings,
Cats make them casualties
of their hygiene

I provided, each time,
what I knew seedlings needed —
moisture-holding mulch,
light, smooth soil —
each of which then also brought
these unintended consequences

But I will not give up.
It is required of me
that I learn more and more
until I know enough
to put things into balance,
Which I can only gain
with deep attention.
It is fair that I,
like every living thing
should pay this price for life.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 10, 2014