Author Archives: Wendy

Resistance and Yielding

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A friend taught a workshop in kinesthetics about resistance and yielding.  She helped us experience the extremes of those opposites so we could recognize them in our bodies, and then to consider a way of moving that might integrate the two.  
Integration
There is a rhythm of the tension and release
a gathering, and then a flowing
I speak of giving birth,
and many smaller things:
telling a story — giving all the words
their needed space, their needed hush
so in their turn they can pour forth
with their needed rush
and prayer — the sweet immersion
into silence, the waiting pause that builds
until the stillness is profound enough
to welcome in the Word
There is a time to hold your breath
to be a vessel where the forming hopes distill
till they well up and tumble forth
along the channels of Life’s will.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 15, 2011



Inner light

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It rains, it rains
The rivulets run down
irregular but constant
and the sound
is soporific and insistent.
That crow outside
is definitely wet
This afternoon will grant no respite
So I need to think
of inner light
and two delightful people
who were suns for me today
lighting up the rooms
and spreading warmth
The glow has stayed —
A lavished layer of brightness
in the lining of my being
Soft as fur 
Warm as tended fire.
May 11, 2011



Matthew’s Beach

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We’ve had very few sunny days this year, and fewer still that have been warm.  So when the temperature crested sixty-three degrees today, it seemed a time for celebration.  I biked to Matthew’s Beach and sat in the life guard’s seat, observing.
At the lake
Children’s voices ring out like
the dance of waves 
which skitter down the beach
like children leaping
plastic pails in hand
skipping back and forth
like waves
to meet the shore
(sun-catching hair flips like flags)
deep in the abandon
of sand-encrusted hands
and startling splashes.
Parents tend them
hold them in the C of their attention
Half-circled arms
in gesture of protection
as momentary sun
kisses us all.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 14, 2011



Dream Gift

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For tonight, an old one:
My friend,
I’d like to take you with me on a dream
one where we have no weight
or where our legs are long as sunset shadows
and we stride down the colors
glide through the shifting sweetness of the wind
side by side
soul by soul
far away
until you step beyond the cords of weary day
free
I’d like to have you wake up
with that glow remaining
so that, as you walk down city streets
blue sky fills your heart.


©Wendy Mulhern
October, 1987



Lessons from Trees

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A friend said to me the other day, “What if trees could only see their trunks?  That would be like us – we see such a small part of what we are, when we look at our bodies.”  Something like that.  It got me thinking, long and deeply, about what else there is of me, and how I might learn to see it.
Looking Further
Stand still and breathe
and let yourself expand
along the outer reaches of yourself
beyond your skin
The part that flies up into trees
and soars among the birds
and reaches to the feelings of another
intrepid kindness knitting souls together
You’ll find new life in moving
in the part that dances in the waves
that glint afar across the bay
You’ll kindle someones’ distant spark of hope
open in joy for having been there
to witness someone’s song-filled, fledgling flight
This is part of you 
more so than bones
more present than your pulse
The part that knows 
and guides 
and glows.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 12, 2011


On love: conversation with an angel

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You have to give up everything
There’s no small sliver you can
smuggle in, no negotiation
of the gift
Even one small grain of will
makes you too heavy to float
One condition, one demand
one holding out for some element
of your pride, or who you
think you are
will keep you down
How is that fair?
Shouldn’t love be a balance?
A matching effort, wing for wing?
If I’m giving everything
shouldn’t he give just a little?
I could tie myself in chains of giving
He could heap on more and more demands
I could devolve into a shadow living
with all decisions in his hands . . .
Fear not, my dear
The everything you give, you give to love
The gift you give is what you gain
Your love, not his acceptance, is your prize
In love, you fly
You leave yourself behind to grasp anew
all that you always were, but never knew.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2011



Vignettes from the game

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                                                                              (with commentary)
I think she’s playing me, he said
But what’s the game, and what’s the prize?
And have I even thought, clear eyed
Of what is is I’m after?
Deep within, beneath the game
The spring of strong desire is wound
We love the way it makes us bound
And we’re compelled to try to find 
The way to make our lives align
With all its pent up need to move.
He circles her, he seems to meditate
He dances with some others, but his eyes
Keep turning back: this time, if I approach
Will she allow me to come close?
And yet what leaps must land
Perhaps in some place wild, unplanned
And maybe many weary miles from home
And maybe, so the fear is, all alone
And torn and damaged.  Ah, so this is why
We stand alone and hesitate to play.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 9, 2011



The Holy Church of Hands

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Here in the silent space
between the songs
Here in the waves of harmony
within the chords
Here in the place you feel that you belong
you step into the holy church of hands.
It stands unmoved
sacred like trees
The holy church of all that you are
brought in, embraced
The holy church
of all we have never yet known
that waits within
a kernel that takes in and takes in,
infinitely,
the water that compels
all potential to expand
our hands to reach out and reach out
and intertwine
pull all into one
and fill the universe
with song.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 7, 2011



Waves like love, love like waves

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Waves are like love, in that
every molecule is connected
each one is lifted in its perfect time
no one is ignored or crushed.
Each one is needed
in its moment
to embody something greater
than it could be alone
and they move as one
though each one crests the rise uniquely
and the pulse goes through them very quickly
something far away comes near
something near can still be felt afar.
Love is like waves in that
it can cover you
and change you profoundly
and you keep feeling it 
long after the first pulse
has passed.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 6, 2011



The Perils of Complaint

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Beware of this – it is no siren’s call
but just a sorry chance for me to fall:
I see that there’s no comfort in complaint
no cozy nest of fellow mopers moaning
where if I’m hurt, or troubled, or in pain
I might find solace.  For they vie in groaning
Each tries to top the others’ doleful story.
No sympathy.  At best a doubtful glory.
So just because I hear somebody grumble
in mournful bid to gain my ready ear
In trying the same tactic I will stumble
and swirl on down in egocentric tears
It’s only upward looking that I gain release
Not in pity, but in elemental peace.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 5, 2011
As might be surmised, I had a tough day today.  Homework for a course I’m taking was unclear, and I ran into a technology glitch, and the course’s instructor responded, cursorily and supremely unhelpfully, to only one of my three emails asking for help and clarification.  I found myself less patient than usual with other people’s complaints.  But in the end I realized that I was gaining nothing by taking it out on them.