Author Archives: Wendy

Core

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If I wanted to save someone  –
anyone  –
though I didn’t know them,
though I wished them well,
just in a general sense –
if I wanted to be of help somehow

Perhaps there’s a practice –
enlarging my tent –
in which I recognize
the core of power
present in everyone,
and how fervently
that core loves truth,
and how it is so nourished
by its own integrity
that no other proposition
affords temptation

How it doesn’t take a movement,
but just for that core
to rise up
in any heart, in any life,
and we will see corruption fall
like lightening from heaven,
collapse to nothingness,
and so many who were bound
will step free.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 29, 2021

Unfathomable

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I guess these days
I’ve  been talking less,
which should be no surprise
given
so few people around
but I mean
I”ve been talking less to myself,
now that I’ve given up instruction,
now that I’ve given up self help

And I guess that’s a footstep
towards listening more –
to the rhythm of everything,
to the quiet moments,
to the voice of the half gone
blackberry leaf, that says
yes, we are here for the deer,
we will provide for them,
and the click of the secret door,
present everywhere,
opening to unfathomable richness.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 28, 2021

The essence of you

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I know the essence of you
by what shines,
like moonlight in a well –
it doesn’t matter how deep –
the response is still the same

I know the essence of you
even by the shadows,
for to have shadows
there must be light projecting out

If I bring my truest sense
of who I am,
if I am honest,
if I will take the time,
if I am still enough,
I may gain this reward  –
the deep honor of getting to know
the essence of you.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 27, 2021

Still Winter

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It’s still winter,
blackbirds singing by the pond
notwithstanding

It’s still winter,
momentary snow amidst the rain
attesting

And it’s still enough
to find a way to feed and warm ourselves
and take the time to watch the snow
command the scene
for the brief time
of its ascendancy

We will make progress
and measure it
not against our endless list of tasks
but in the pace
of winter’s strict permissions.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 26, 2021

Gifts

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How could I have thought
my gifts were mine to keep?
– for they were gifts, which means
they must be given …

And how could I have thought
the gift would come from me
in a straight channel, like a raindrop
down a window?

When clearly every gift
is what is given us
so we can bring it
to the neverending flow
like water in a river
that comes to it from everywhere  –
all the watershed calling it forth,
birthing it with every contribution
to celebrate its neverending source.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 24, 2021

Words

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The truth is not in the words.
The words are what rise, inevitably,
like morning steam,
from wood, from fields,
true as their source
and the forces that bid them rise.
They can be followed
by one who chooses the necessary silence,
all the way to truth

But when they’re argued over,
they move and dissipate
in all the curling currents of the air –
you won’t find truth in words alone –
it isn’t there.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 23, 2021

Introspection

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It’s a good time in your life
he said, to think about these things
(when I confided what I had been pondering)

Like the effect of being handed stuff
you never worked for,
but are assured that you deserve,
that somehow
the hoops you jumped through
and the mantle you assumed
should be enough
to buy you all those things
and make you worthy

What is the real price
for learning to be real?
How did the people who achieved it
come upon it?
These things I start to fathom
from walking on the land
and building fires
and fetching water.
But there is so much more –
enough to occupy my days
for now, and for as far as I can see.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 22, 2021

Closing down the well house at night

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The path I walk
so many times.a day
(and now at night,
my lantern faintly
showing me the way,
soft clouds lit up
by just a touch of moonlight,
soft air against my face)
is not without its thoughts of future  –
what this place may sometime be –
but seems to have less of the past,
our forward press so steady on,
and, too, the sense of dissolution,
of all the past now found
to have been founded on illusion,
and the need to step ahead
lest my dissolving footprints
catch up to me.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 21, 2021

January 20, 2021

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In the breathing of this nation
we can feel
deep desire
for reconciliation,
to be healed –
not that wrongs be covered  –
that they be revealed
so we can end our unmoored
drifting through illusions

Let us wash the disfiguring ignorance
from our hands, from our faces,
and be weaned from our dependency
on things that curate chasms.
We have sinned, yes, we have sinned,
but let it not be hidden from us –
we, too, can find within,
the strength to rise
with a refusal to be herded,
to be lied to,
to be deceived because it’s easy

Even when it’s hard,
the truth is cleaner and more bracing,
more health giving than what we have been fed.
Today we stand together
in the willingness
to live inclusive unity instead.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 20, 2021

Owning it

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Much is said, by many,
about the best way to live one’s life,
and I find myself,  with something
less than a thought,
releasing what opinions
I may have had
about that
and thinking,
Is not every life
destined to find its perfect resolution?
Is not every life
its own singular path?

Then how can anyone
standing outside of it
say the way a life should go?
And how can anyone live a life
without owning it?

©Wendy Mulhern
January 18, 2021