Author Archives: Wendy

Harvest

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I kept walking through spider webs.
Even when I tried not to,
even when I held out my hand against them,
still I would feel the sudden threads across my face,
hear the tick of breaking strands,
feel the sticky tickle in my hair.
As I’d recoil to free myself,
I’d hit another.

Yes, they were busy.
But I still got a free harvest
of sour purple-blue berries
pulled from their red stems.
I boiled them with sugar
to obtain a bright elixir
And I felt rich
and grounded,
at one with the earth
on which I have a right to walk,
on which I belong.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 8, 2013


Other Plans

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The world, as it turns out,
is not constructed with words,
not made of plans and cardboard resolutions,
Does not need to be specified,
evaluated, modified,
Nor do you need to make yourself fit in it.

The world has its own logic:
Cleave to it!
It will take you through soft, cool hollows
and up and down along the curving ground,
Sunlight will strike you,
and shifting shade,
and you’ll be enchanted.
You’ll find your hunger sweet
and its fulfillment
more delicious than you ever could prescribe.
You’ll find everything you need,
even the meeting of your need to give.

It isn’t, as it turns out,
something you needed to design
or could have forced to come out differently.
Live in it!
It will take you in its arms
and you’ll be glad,
for it was made with you in mind.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 6, 2013


Let Go

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Every child of Life
if free to move
will home unerringly —
some in a direct line,
some with wild and bouncing flailing,
ranging off in many far directions,
needing to stretch out, to try
the whole span of the force —
needing to feel the centering pull
assert itself against their surging motion.

Let them free —
They all will come home,
though you can’t know their course,
and maybe they won’t either.
The law that constitutes them,
the force that animates their core,
the Love that owns them
will guide their way.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 5, 2013


Taproot

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The roots of your connection
go down deep —
Like comfrey, they reach into the subsoil,
pulling up the minerals
that rise from ancient bedrock.

Whatever artifice has been applied,
whatever degradation of the soil,
you are equipped
to tap the primal nutrient
and bring it back
into the cycle of life.

Don’t ever think that you can be defeated —
Like comfrey, if they chop you,
you will come back stronger,
by virtue of your simple insistence
on the right of life to thrive,
and of each living thing to manifest
just what it is —
not made for any purpose other than its own
and its essential link to everything.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 4, 2013


Summer Snapshot

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It’s spider season
which may not help against aphids.
It’s a time when beauty pushes
against the back side of my eyes,
suggesting tears —
Beauty of guitar sound through the open window,
cloaked enough by outside noise
to only come in snatches
that remind me of the boy inside,
bittersweetly soon to leave for college;
Beauty of slightly drought-stressed flowers
heading towards seed.
It all looks rather wild,
and the yield is less than perfect
but the bees don’t care.
Lazy beauty of summer
leaves me with some scarcely defined longing —
Maybe the plants can understand it more than I,
Maybe the crows know.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 3, 2013


I wish I knew this twenty years ago (but maybe now will do)

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I can’t make anyone do anything
and there’s no reason to want to.
I can’t determine someone else’s quality
or what their proper course in life might be.

My best engagement is to watch in awe
and then join in,
my rhythm and my melody in harmony
with what another’s life is singing.

My best course is
to feel how life moves in me
and how it deftly guides my action,
and to be at one
with that bright, liquid essence
that always finds its perfect place.
This is the way I’ll give the blessing
I most need to give;
this is how I’ll find my promised grace.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 2, 2013


Evening

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Hard work can make my mind go blank —
a pleasant wordlessness
of well-used muscles,
the satisfying glow of tasks completed.

I took my emptiness
out to the counsel of the cloudy sky
where trees, assembled, 
marked their soft assent
to what the night would bring

The sound sphere was inhabited
by freeway’s roars and passing planes,
gravel turning under wheels of cars,
the parting barking of dogs
before they went indoors,
the final squawk of random birds,
and the quiet chink of wind chimes near the house.

All’s well.
The night will come
and we will sleep
while trees stand guard,
and in my dreams 
or in the early light of morning
may come my words’ return.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 1, 2013


Singularity

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The evil beast will get you if it can.
Bear in mind:
It doesn’t have your interests at heart.
If you plea for lenience,
if you consent
to be at its mercy,
if you let it choose the rules,
it won’t choose in a way that favors you.

Stand up! It’s in your nature
to set the boundaries for your life,
to determine who you are
and what your heart designs.
It isn’t your nature
(despite the claims the beast intensely makes)
to let external arguments
define your place.

It may use a smooth and syrupy voice,
but never think
that what you want is sleep,
that you prefer to let what’s done to you
define you.
You know who you are
and you are called, right here, right now
to be that being,
to live your own unique, exquisite truth,
to hold firm in your singular perception
that balances the turning of the world.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 31, 2013


Wilderness

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Walking here
I have to admit
I don’t know anything —
Nothing I could package
and deliver as a
Thing That I Have Learned.
I have no map for myself —
No one’s words hover at my shoulder,
especially not my own —
no conclusion I can make,
no lesson I can take from here on forward.
In what way can I say I know anything,
of life, of love, of death?

Yet when I close my eyes
and follow my breath
into the undergrowth of dream,
I feel like a wilderness
and it feels good.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 30, 2013


To Chris: Angel Wizard

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It took coming together
to know
the gift of your questions —
to see how broadly they were cast
and how we each,
from our deep longing to be heard,
were so enchanted —
sweet that you should ask,
sweet that you should listen
with such articulate and cogent interest —
the light so thrown on us
that (what now seems surprising)
we never thought to ask about the source —
that unassuming shining
that reached out to hold us up
and make a structure
in which we held the love
to keep you safe.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 29, 2013