Author Archives: Wendy

Walking Wordless

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Your smile is full of light
And isn’t this enough?
Do I even need to know the words—
The actual traces of your conscious thought?
If I asked you, would the things you said
Lead us away from this pure shining
Back along the worn out paths of stress?

In case it would, perhaps it’s best
For us to walk in silence
The smile light still is real
Whatever words line up behind it
And maybe we can find this layer of light
And live our lives along it, never leaving
Never dipping down into the blight
Of all the things we used to think had meaning
Perhaps it’s here that we unite
Not in opinion, not in words agreeing
But in the brightness of our shared delight
The source towards which we all are leaning
I may ask what you’re thinking in a little while
But in this moment, let me keep your smile.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 20, 2012



You have to be grounded to fly

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You have to be grounded to fly
As kites well show—
Resistance from their strings
giving the wind the force
to push them high
Which if released would let them fall
slicing tip-wise 
through the layers of air

You have to be grounded to fly
As birds well know—
as they push off against the gravity
that holds the air that cushions them
Through which they carve their flight
with sharply honed intention
and the slipstream of their glide

You have to be grounded to fly
As planets go
through space, 
their molten centers coalescing force
The silent concentration of their cores
connecting them in orbit to their stars

And so it is with us
Within our deeply grounded center
is born the power that sends us forth
on arcs of soaring splendor.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 19, 2012



The need to be witnessed

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It is not too much to ask
to have someone to take
by the hand
To lead down corridors
of memory, experience, imagination
To say to: look—here’s a picture of me
as a child
And here’s the song that still reminds me
of that summer back in ’78
full of sun and angst and wild escape
And here’s a thing I learned in Italy
along the streets of Florence

It’s not too much to ask
to have someone who keeps
a special box for treasures
tucked in an honored place
inside their mind
to put the things you share
and take them out
and look at them sometimes

And yes, you’ll keep a treasured box
for all the things your friend has shared
You’ll take them out in gratitude
You’ll love them, since you care

No need to strive for some
prescribed degree of fitness
It’s not too much to ask 
to have a witness.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 18, 2012



Convergence

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As words come to me,
my receptivity
rises up to meet them

As my seeking for a way to bless
ranges out across my consciousness
Your arms extend a place for it to rest

Such bliss! To meet in the convergence
My need to give, your willingness
now, to receive
In this, your hunger blesses me
and meets my need

The figure loops, we spin around again
This time you give, and I receive
But then
Perhaps as current flows
dynamic, into one
Our pulse, too, unifies
and every boundary
becomes undone.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 17, 2012



Chasing love

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After much pursuit
(sun through trees rendered strobe-like
by my frenzied pace)
Desire made wild by the elusive flitting
of something always held
just out of reach,
I wake—
Jolt of awareness:
That which I’ve been chasing
is right here
and it has never been withheld —
By nature, it is infinitely present
Though I may miss the rush
I also like the flood of peace
that comes from knowing I will always
have enough.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 16, 2012



Shelter

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A house of cards
A house of straw
A house of words
What gravitas can they afford?

A bold, invented self
Or even one that hides
And only tells itself its little stories
How can it feed the hunger of my soul?

I’m rendered quiet
I don’t even have two cards
To lean against each other
No straw that isn’t old and wet and mildewed
No words to form a self-respecting cover

So I go and dance
I build my house of arcs of reaching arms
And light that flows between each darting glance
All filled with music and the moment’s charms

And if my gesture shelters someone else
And gathers others as its moves unfold
I, too, will find a shelter for myself
In that sweet harmony
The dance can hold.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 15, 2012



Soul Retrieval

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No, no,
This is not the promise you were given
Mountains of detritus,
Self-enforced confinement
Stress and tracks of weary years
Across your face

No
This is not your course
The clock-enforced conformity
The envious and jealous stabs within
Reflexive judgement,
Passing down the curse
Of being conquered

However much the rules you’re taught
claim to control
You never could be severed
from your soul

Hold with me now
Together, let’s sing your song
It leads you back along the lines of longing
To where you’ve always sensed that you belong
We’ll all converge there jubilantly thronging
At home as if we never had been gone

Let our eyes now feed each other’s embers
Resurrect our light so we remember
What had seemed so lost from us, so far
Who we’ve ever been
And who we are.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 14, 2012


(background music: Max Richter, “Embers”)

Dancing free

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There are natural ways
for things of different type to separate
The wheat from chaff with weight and agitation
The silver melting free in fervent heat

What then releases our presuppositions
that hold us stiff and stressed and isolated?
What focuses our sense of truth conditions
that home us to the joy for which we’ve waited?

A centrifuge, a tone, an ionizer
The kindled heat between caressing hands
A touch of grace that leaves us kinder, wiser
A place we feel we have the right to stand
The light that sparks and rises from connection
Illuminates our timeless, deep perfection.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 13, 2012


Beam me up . . .

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The place beneath my breath today
is full of lights
Brilliant as pointillist dots
that seethe and swarm and dance
and form a scene
too close for me to see
But when we sit together
Lights reflecting lights
and multiplying
Then the scene appears
So clearly scrying
That which lifts us up
and sets us flying
out beyond old limits, fear defying

So many lights! Lighter than air
Light enough to lift a whole dream
into lucidity, light enough to stream
through solar systems
Light enough to beam us
Beatific
Pulsing clear and true
across the night.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 12, 2012



Serving Light

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In this temple of the dance
You can put off your shoes
and join the sacred rite
Enter anonymous into the holy trance
to be a vessel, bearer of the light

(You’ll choose it for the way
                                        the light transfixes you
         Fills out your being, flowing from inside
                   against your skin
                                              suffusing you
         until you glow and radiate
                       and float in brilliant bliss
                 across the room)

Moving then in service to the light
Your eyes can touch another’s, and ignite
The signal can be passed from hand to hand
Each one who joins will cause it to expand

You may come back to find your boundaries shifted
Your thoughts now finer, softer, lifted
Buoyant, like all things light has sifted
You’ll see yourself anew as blessed and gifted

(Not that you ever have to look at it this way
This is the work, but it is also play!)


©Wendy Mulhern
February 10, 2012