Author Archives: Wendy

To Sunny

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No, please —
(as I see you from afar,
drifting down the currents
of someone’s strenuous persuasion)
Remember what you had —
Remember how we both
filled with that so-tangible light,
heart-homed, rising more massively
than magma,
shining through our eyes,
making that visiting booth a lantern
that poured its brightness into all my life.

I know I always went away euphoric,
my joy so well fed,
my faith so anchored
by your stand for truth.
How can you forget?
How can you leave that light
for cold logic, dry texts,
and an old excluding story?

Come back —
(I ask you, knowing
I have no traction
except the hope we planted together
which has spread into a great field
in the time you’ve been gone.)

©Wendy Mulhern
January 11, 2014

Resurfacing

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Twice today I finished typing
and hit the “send” button,
and noticed that my heart was sounding
that homing drum,
that turning thump
that signified
travel to altered states,
passage through some narrow place,
(speed-squeezed along the airfoil,
pulled through the lift
of the attenuated pressure)
the re-emerging into normal day
requiring decompression,
proof that I had touched the table
of some deep-lying truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 10, 2014

Coming of Age

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May you emerge bravely
from that tight, sad place
which breeds such desperate loneliness
in the family-sized scrabble
to be seen, to find respect
(the sense of home
so compromised by struggle)

It might be best
for you each to forge your way alone —
leave the family voices
behind for a while —
The love is there,
but its application
is an advanced problem —
better to start with the relative ease
of friendly strangers . . .

May you invent yourselves —
find a new face that will
let you give voice
to who you’ve always been
but haven’t dared express,
May the broad sky embrace your courage,
May you gain comfort
in the arms of new-found friends.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 9, 2014

Passage

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Hard walking, this,
as among the rolly stones along the beach —
worse, for sharp edges reach to snag,
and mire beneath them
is often quick, and my foot
sinks down unexpectedly,
and no step can be sure

But I will keep walking,
I will not stop for
all the cluttered claims of pain
or the searing cold of sudden doubt
of things I’d held so sure

This much is clear —
The act of moving is itself a strength,
and little joys still shine
from unexpected places,
and the investment over many years
of what I work to carry —
attention, faith, discipline —
will pull me through.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 8, 2014

Nexus

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At any moment,
you can be
the spark point of divinity,
the nexus of reflection,
the place where the God light
touches down
between you and another.

You can be willing,
which makes you
a tuner, an amplifier
for the ever present music
that stirs your inner infinity
and brings it up —
an offering
that unites you both in blessing
and carries your sudden comprehension
down the bright living stream of life.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 6, 2014

Particulars

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In the real world,
particulars matter —
inches and angles,
proportion and timing,
and, of all the people
you could have been with,
who it actually is.

In real love,
particulars matter,
but they are not metered or weighed
like exacting alchemical recipes.
Instead, each of these
very idiosyncratic things
becomes an astonishing bright point,
a hitherto unimagined
touch of perfection
that had to be so —
just precisely the way it is.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 5, 2014

Becoming Real

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We start to consider
what it will take to become real,
what it will take to release ourselves
from the role in the story
in which we have no power
to infuse the structure
with our integrity,
no power to ensure
our livelihood is built on justice.

We will become real
because we do have power.
We must build our world from scratch
because it can be right,
and we’re not living
till we own
all the consequences
of our actions,
till they reflect
our natural, steady,
all-embracing care.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 4, 2014

True Words

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It seemed she had forgotten them,
the way they fell, in random pattern
like raindrops shaken
from a branch
into a pond
(the ripples moving out silently
to intersect noiselessly,
patterns of expanding circles
enveloping each other)

They seemed to fall without intent,
and yet,
in the moments following,
the melody they made
(repeating and inverting,
echoing and spreading)
kept on reverberating
till their meaning
and their message
had made themselves
indelibly clear.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2014

Trusted

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We will ride home
across golden meadows,
the gracious sun glowing at our coming,
our shadows stretching royal
along the welcome road;
We will ride home
supported by the very air,
caressed by the attending breeze.

We have done well,
as was decreed at our creating;
we have been
exactly as we were intended.
This fulfillment
comes from something higher
than our forms can comprehend,
this victory
our creator’s gift to us
of the particulars
of our design

We will ride home
as was written and is now enacted,
in the rich ease of being trusted.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 2, 2014

Just before the turn

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It’s not quite time
for the quiet click
that signals
the start up of a new cycle,
not quite where the whirrings
of the measuring machinery
propel the system on
past the pause at the top of the circle
into the subtle push
before momentum picks up
and sends the circle onward . . .
Not quite time,
but we can pause,
here as anywhere,
to let our breath catch up.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 31, 2013