Author Archives: Wendy

Gardens

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So many things in my garden are bolting

Racing against death
Preparing a dual departure:
Packaging their life into capsules for the future,
Letting their stalks fall back into brown

In the face of my neglect
The plants perform their dramas
Weeds stake out their turf
Flowers stretch and bow extended stems
Bees and rain bestow their ministrations

Some year, I think, my garden may be tended
Each tender plant well fed
with soil amended,
The weeds, with gentle firmness
kept in hand
The flowers celebrated, blooming
lushly, just as planned

But I’m distracted by another realm
Where, like fennel weeds
My dreams extend their gangly fronds
And wave about, seedy and untended
When I visit them, I have no clue
Which ones to pull, which ones to prune
Or what to do to garner greater flourish

So neither garden gets my full attention
And both grow wild, and dry, and spare
But still, in both, the sun-drenched flowers
Summon me, and touch me there.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 26, 2012



Daily Bread

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If I could give you anything
I’d give you one moment
of knowing
how deeply you are accepted
How perfectly you belong
in this particular place and time
In this singular infinity we call
Here and now

I’d give you the grounded certainty
that you are loved
Seen for what you are
and loved for that 
— all of it —
(What you hoped was normal
What you feared was strange
What you didn’t dare affirm
to be your precious, holy gifts)

Having given that
I’d give you it again
I’d give it to you every day
and every time I saw you
One time of knowing is a touchstone
But knowing all the time 
is daily bread.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 25, 2012



Amends

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A heart that has been touched
will turn
walking back along the path of words —
things said in hope of being heard,
whose impact may have singed another:
“No, that wasn’t what I meant —
I didn’t mean to cause you pain
I only wanted to be seen
Please let me make it right again”

Back along the path
Running now, to close the distance
Running, hoping not to trip
To reach you, and . . . 

What’s needed here 
is not more explanations
Such words, I fear, would only further tangle
Just let me take the time to stop
to witness you
To listen and to hear
Behold you
and really see
Breathe with you 
until you know:
When your heart spoke,
Its language stopped me in my tracks
Made me turn back.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 23, 2012


Possibilities

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I’ve been keeping a door open all day
Maybe some bugs have come in
But there’s a sweet breeze
and a gentle whistling of the air
and something that turns my feet
subtly sideways towards the opening
and sets my thought softly drifting
towards the outside
A place where currents blend
And fragrances combine
in ways that offer journeys for my mind
And bees do their persistent work
And birds and squirrels offer commentary

I’ve been keeping a door open
to draw me out
And to offer entrances
In the steady breathing
that’s called home.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 22, 2012


Asking for Heaven

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If it is true

(and it is)
that we can have
all the good we can imagine,
The trick is to imagine it big enough:
To get a glimpse, and cherish
what it feels like
to have a good that covers every need —
That doesn’t end abruptly when the time is up
or care is spent
or we are pulled away to fill our roles
as slaves of guilt
or slaves of debt

And so I treasure each of these
Each hope, each joy
Each hunger, every yearning
For they help me frame the asking
for the promised thing —
That which, when requested,
must be given —
So I won’t settle for a grim security
because I didn’t know
to ask for heaven.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 21, 2012



Angel Love

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Angels in heaven know how to love
There’s nothing unsatisfying about it
No hints of possible connection
glinting just out of reach
behind a few words
(if you could only get them right)
or a few circumstances
(if only timing would align)

Angels in heaven have no problem
with triangulation, asymmetry
rhythmic incompatibility
And they don’t need to 
negotiate, hypothesize
agonize, analyze

Angels in heaven
are not detached from love
Not walled off from it
by ethereal piety
They embody all of love —
The full-sounding, deep toning
Heart-swelling, zinging, zooming
Pow of it
The joy bubbles and the lasting satisfaction —
The here and now of it

Angels in heaven love you whole
Erase your pain, light up your soul
Don’t take my word that it is so
Love like an angel, and you’ll know.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 19, 2012


Illumination

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You and I
together
Make an arc of golden light
A hearth, a home
And the warm bright
aura of its circle
Halos each of us
throughout our disparate days

And it is right to understand
that such a glow
will cast its comfort
further than the bounds 
of you and I
It’s fitting that our love
Light up the sky.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 18, 2012





The Truth shall make you free

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Truth won’t let you settle
for a paradigm that sells your soul.
Though you may plead and pray
for what you feel would be
the easy way
(just once to be allowed 
to beat the odds,
to be the one who comes out
on the top)
you will not get it.

Truth delivers you
from the whole paradigm 
of win and lose
of being some unworthy one
Lucky today, but waiting
for inevitable failure —
Don’t despair:
You can let go of all that pain

Truth does have its demand:
You need to know it
Need to let yourself be weaned
from all the lies about your being
Then Truth delivers you
into its essence, where you rise transcendent
Free and whole, divine, beloved, resplendent.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 17, 2012


Healing

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It’s good to notice this
It’s good to remember
It’s good to look back in awe
and consider
how this has happened

From fractured trusts
and disappointed hopes
and the attempts to shore them up
by shoving them in boxes
and constricting them, 
depriving them of light

To a calm dawn
of endless possibility
A strong bond
An infinite security
An opening of something so grand
So boundless in its purity
We can’t begin to fathom what it is

Since it happened here
it can happen again
in every sphere
for everyone

The seamless, perfect pattern of our lives
can be revealed
And everything we held as hurt or broken
can be healed
And every promise of sustaining goodness
can come forth
in its effortless unfolding
And be our lives.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 16, 2012 

River Song

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I’ll keep the refrain of the song of the river

           Its rumble and shout as it courses along
   Caressing the rock into smooth, graceful contours
                   High leaping arcs as it thunders on down

             The roil and the roll and the coming together
       Frothy rejoining of channels
Soft curling curve of the eddies returning
      Sloshing back over the rocks

              See how it takes me
                    It captures and fascinates
                            I could behold it forever
            Much later, memory takes it to illustrate
Life-thrumming rhythms within

And I find myself feeling
         we’ve come through a waterfall
             Free falling, crashing, and tumbling out
                  Joy of abandon, then jolt of the reckoning
                         Sinking and wondering:
                              Where are we now?

               Deep in the pool, in the calm underneath
           we remember
       Water is one, and we’ve never been lost or alone
We fall with the force from the source to the ocean
        Far-flung but always at home

     So we rise, so we roll, so we merge
           In the pulsing repeat of the song
      So, smoothly, our courses converge
 In what we have been all along.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 15, 2012