Author Archives: Wendy

Sisterhood

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In this moment
We know why we are here.
We don’t know what we’ll say
Or if we’ll even talk
Or if we’ll dance, or sing, or pray
And yet we sense
We will support each other.

We each will ask
For what will feed us now.
We each will find
Within our yet unspoken wisdom
The truth that meets each other’s present need.

We each will rise
Impelled by what’s required
To know our selves as capable,
As bright providers
Of what sustains us while alone
As while together.
We are, in this shared role,
Our greatest treasure.
So we flow upwards, outwards,
Splendid wings unfurled,
A sisterhood to overcome the world.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 14, 2013


Homecoming: a vision

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She makes her way along familiar streets
now rendered narrow
by the broadness of her vision.
Her light-filled eyes
scan these scenes
of her recent past
which tug up tears she scarcely understands.

Her skirt snags on corners;
She tries to pull it in;
It keeps on spilling outward
Like her love,
Like her tears.
She wants to gather all these up;
She wants them to come with her,
Wants them to see her.

They are afraid
that they have lost her,
that she won’t stay home,
that in her brilliance
she has no time to see them.

She will find a way to bring them in
She will be patient
She’ll come up from behind,
Shine through them softly
So the light they see is theirs
Rising from within
to meet her own.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 13, 2013


Visiting hour, King County Jail

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None of these restraints are what they seem:
Though we may feel the structure is
the walls and doors, the iron and the glass,
the heavy locks,
They only are projections of the barriers inside —
The layers upon layers of revoked permissions
set down since toddlerhood,
And the narrow mazes of propriety
inculcated through all our years of school,
Reared up here as final ultimatum:
Stay in the lines, or you will crash, hard, here.

But none of these structures
are what they seem.
Such a surprise to see the guards,
The sentinels of good-defined-by-evil,
Jealous keepers of prescribed morality
Receiving our sweet, wilting, proffered flowers
and stepping over
to our side.

The power of the truth within,
The still, small voice of liberty
Autopoiesis of each living thing
Must overcome these walls and set us free.
Yes, we will pray.
That’s where we must begin.
Against these odds
it is the only way to win.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 12, 2013


My body’s yes

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What is it
that calls my body’s yes
in the middle of the night?
— The yes that knows
with the certainty of weather
how to move —
How to flow along the thermal currents
Steady as progressing clouds across the sky
Soft as air
Warm as breath
Smooth as steam

What is the I Am in you
that calls forth this response
somewhere beneath the layers
of directed thought?
I found myself, within myself,
in awe,
Embodying a grace I’d never known,
Inhabiting a place of
effortless, continuous engagement
With some imperative
delectable
ineffable
presence of you.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 11, 2013


Focusing

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This realigning of what matters
is like a massive shift in focus
in which vertical lines
trade places with each other
and what I thought was space between
is coming into view as solid
and what I thought was solid
may turn out to not be anything.

And in my reassessment
I still haven’t found
the rare bird
on which I hoped my lens was trained
but those leaves
in bright and waxy detail
stand out, surreal, 
against surrounding greens.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 10, 2013


On Mortality: Four Observations

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I.
“It’s all over now, baby blue.”
In the buckling of the sky
(blue, almost serene, beyond my windshield,
Turned, in my mind’s eye
by the lyrics of a song)
I felt how creatures die
in the final overwhelm
that overcomes
the desperate, rising impulse
of life plunged into struggle.
They shut their eyes tight,
They curl up
They let it all go —
A sudden shift in priorities —
It all goes quite easily:
They open their eyes
And it is gone.

II.
Maybe each time we awake,
We die from the dream we were in
All those scenes
So swiftly forgotten
in the insistent brushstrokes
of the day’s reality.
Maybe we have died thousands of times,
or more (he said)
And it is something in our creature memory:
We know what it is.

III.
Against the backdrop of impassive sky
These tragedies roll out,
These cries of anguish,
All this waste, this grief,
The drudgery, the disappointment
And the clamor for relief
Yet we will give our all for life
Until the final moment comes.

IV.
I don’t intend to die today
But if I did
I would be satisfied.
I’ve sown true seeds,
I’ve shared my gift,
I’ve known great love
I have more words
But these could be enough.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 9, 2013


Taste of spring

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Days like this
I remember
How the sun can come for me —
How, even if I face it from a place of stress,
Numb to any radiance or peace,
Its shining will start to reach through —
Soft warming on my face,
Dazzle of water sparkles on my eyes,
Subtly winning ground in my attentions
Till I am undone,
Abandon all preoccupations
And stretch, catlike,
Into the luxury of its gift.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 8, 2013


Getting home

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There are so many ways
to get back to your foundation.
You can get there by rising —
Your upward thrust locating,
through its balance,
the deep support that sends you on your way

You can get there by falling —
Tumbling for mercy,
Needing everything,
Drawing your aid from your loves.

You can get there in frenzy —
Flailing till everything extra burns out
and nothing is left but the core.
You can get there in stillness —
Settling into your peace
till you know nothing more.

You can forge for it,
Resolute and alone,
Brave and courageous
till all the resistance is done.
You can find it in liquid togetherness,
Gathering strength as you pool
in a deep, shared surrender.

One thing is sure:
You are destined to find it,
Certain as anything known —
There are so many kinds of returning,
So many ways to get home.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 7, 2013



Awakening

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Another layer of dissolving dream
sits like mist a little distant from my eyes
I peer to see the sun — pale disk,
emerging
Asserting its dominion on the day

The mist, dispersing, opens out my vision
The ground, now oddly solid
sends its message through my soles:
This is the earth on which you have been walking
This is the contact that will find you whole

I realize that I’d wondered why, while grasping
at all those things, I never really held one
Or why in running towards those goals
I never reached them,
Why the teachers’ lessons
Felt confusing, hopeless, boring
Why I always plodded
When I felt I should be soaring —
Now I know.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 6, 2013


Standing

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We’ve been through this before
but this time we’re wiser
and will stand unflinching
as all those shapes pass through us —
those illusions of ourselves,
walking and moving
but absent our deep desire —
ourselves moving in tracks
set up to have us shuffle
mostly mindless,
mostly lifeless,
through our days

This time we won’t 
fall in step with them
For our roots reach down
so much deeper —
through rocks, through magma,
to the mingling with the very core of things,
And our crowns,
full as the most established of the guardian trees —
Our crowns dance with the stars.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 5, 2013