Author Archives: Wendy

Thirty years ago today

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(To Edward)

Thirty years ago today
in Philadelphia
I awoke to a quiet that told me
snow had fallen
Magic blanket that kissed the ground
and faded
in time for me to take
my one-pedaled bicycle
and ride (in my grandmother’s skirt)
to a dance I had never attended
where, in a mixer
your eyes twinkled

So I came and talked to you later
leaning against the wall,
standing by the chair where you sat.
Unpracticed and hopeful,
I asked you about yourself
Dazzled . . .

Together we had enough money
for two Dr. Peppers
which bought us a table at Carney’s
and time to talk
Our voices alive, our hands animated
Leaning towards each other —
Intentional community
Bell curves, affinity . . .

You drove me home
(my bike in the back)
Our parting kiss held a promise
“I like your ideas,” you said
thus assuring that I would take interest
The rest, well
The rest was destiny.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 9, 2012



Love is a Decision

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Feelings are so fickle
Love is much more than that
Love is a decision

You may wander
into the room of oneness
where you see the wonder
of infinite connection
You may want to match
all your points of unity
To line them up
one along another
and follow the diverging vectors
out to new dimensions
broadening the scope of who you are

You may try
to anchor down your feelings in reality
Negotiate a steady reciprocity
And if you don’t succeed
or if you do but later it becomes unsprung
Your feelings will not hold you there
They turn around, or simply float away

Love is much more than that
You may wander any day
into a room of knowing oneness
Love is the decision
to stay.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 8, 2012


Idols

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Winds of Spirit
Sweep my thought
It’s time to cast out idols
Those who ask for time
Those who ask for blood
Those who ask for tiresome daily ritual
Who say they have the power
to save my sorry life
or, if I fail to worship,
occasion my demise

But they know nothing, and their mouths can’t speak
The life they offer is anemic, weak
And Spirit shows me, right here, what I am
Exposing all their noxious threats as sham

I will not worship
the god of appearances
I will not worship
the god of social norms
I will not worship
the god of shopping bargains
I will not worship
the god of health concerns

Winds of Spirit, sweep my soul
for I am made to worship 
what is true and whole
That frames the space for all that’s free and wild
And holds us each as Life’s untrammeled child.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 6, 2012

(background music: Max Richter, “Haunted Ocean”)

The nature of my needed lighter touch

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(in nurturing the music in my son)

Today I saw music
as it lit
(iridescent angel)
on the tip of sound
Tracing its bright melody and swift delight
Sending its rich pulsing through the ground

Today I see that music
doesn’t come at coarse commands
of sharp regimentation
nor years of dogged discipline and work
For, sunken under critical dismissal
How can the magic of the sound emerge?

But rather, music rises from
the gentle kiss of close connection
of the grace that is one’s being
with the grace that is the song
A lighting in the joy of it
A natural touching down
A cross-time current drawing out the tones
of all that’s beautiful in kindred souls

My job then: to protect
the sphere of space in which the music can appear
To let it grow by feeding it
with light and approbation
so it’s free to flit and choose to land right here
Where its reverberation will be clear.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 4, 2012



Deliverance Prayer

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Deliverance Prayer (background music “The Blessing” by Isaac Shepard)

Bring my soul up out of Egypt
Walk me step by patient step
out of the patterns that enslave me
Release me from the lockstep
that doesn’t look
that is afraid to seek the kinship of a smile
 
Teach me to spin out on the leaf edge
of the wind
and twirl into the knowing
of the infinite variety —
Intricacies which Life has ever blessed
 
Let me no longer follow
the commands that run them over
that allow us three or four straight norms at best
Unclamp my feet from marching
Free my toes
to find the subtle footholds
midst the wildness of the river
 
Free the rivers, too
and let us all please tumble brightly
down the perfect, wild, unchanneled 
course that we were born for
Let us know each other 
deeply, truly, freely
 
Bring my soul up out of Egypt
That I may worship
My Good.


©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2012
 
photo by Edward Mulhern
 

Waltz Time

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I was dancing with my darling
The night they were playing
That beautiful Tennessee Waltz
And you know how it goes
Well, we stepped on some toes
But we’re certain it wasn’t our faults.

For we swung round and round
Round and round, round and round
Till the ceiling spun into the walls
And though we heard people swear
As we crashed here and there
We hardly even noticed their falls.

I was dancing with my darling
The night they were playing
That beautiful Tennessee Waltz
Till they cleared off the floor
And showed us the door
And brought all our fun to a halt(z).


©Wendy Mulhern
Spring, 2009



Opinions

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Having an opinion about everything
May be a sign of loneliness
Like playing cards with yourself
Everything finished, nothing waiting
For input from another hand.

Having an opinion about everything
Makes it harder
To find a match
Since meeting point for point
At every tooth of thought
Would be required to turn the key
To lift the latch.

Alas for you, then, who collect
Large bellies of opinion
That block your movement
And mistake correctness for dominion

Here is your hope:
Opinions can be left behind
You can abandon them for love
And thereby liberate your mind.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 1, 2012


Soporific Rain

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Soporific rain
Robs the morning
Of its earliest pursuits
Yet the sweetness
of the night remains
Wraps itself around my dreaming music

Languidly we move
There is no way
The clock can catch us
in its marching regimen
We’ll slide in languid sloth into the day
Let later light, in its own time
attract us

The day has duties that we dare not shirk
But we can meet them softly, without stress
Yes, we’ll take on all our needed work
But through a film of rain-kissed happiness.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 1, 2012



Capture, Rapture

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Something in your eyes
Reached straight into me
Hurtling its course
Through my eyes, through my throat
To my heart, to my gut
To my core
Roiling a great wake
Wherever it went
And I was caught
On your hook
Because you showed me
The part that calls out desperately
To be seen, and to be hugged
And I wanted to follow that line
All the way inside you
Point for point of contact
Till I knew
All your secret landscapes.

So I have been called
Not once, not twice,
But every time
So now I think
This isn’t made of you and me
But of the light that always seeks its own
It never asks for our consent
But darts out instantly
Like electricity
And sets the current running strong
To its own ends, to serve its song
Regardless of the constructs
We’ve presented as ourselves
The light is what seduces us:
It’s our desire to be lit up
That keeps us ever coming back for more.


©Wendy Mulhern
January 30, 2012



Imposter

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It’s not your voice, I told him
that censures you, that censures me,
that seeks to keep us hemmed in
on a narrow path between our fears
with needs that go unclaimed, unmet
through weary, empty years
separated from each other
so we never feel
the grand connection that could comfort us
and flawlessly reveal
the glorious fireworks of our being
all the color, all the light
continuous igniting 
of the flame that pulses bright
to mark the vastness of the universe
in which we freely roam
which is defined by us
and is our rightful home
Your voice, I told him,
won’t consign our souls to hell
It knows what’s true about you
and it knows it well.


©Wendy Mulhern
January 29, 2012