The line between ridiculous and lovable
may shift, suddenly,
surprising the beholder
with unexpected feelings
Good thing that lovable
has deeper saturation –
once you have seen that way,
you’re unlikely to go back,
©Wendy Mulhern
May 20, 2020
This is you. You meet yourself
before you step into the morning,
before the flood
of all the to dos,
and should have dones,
before you square your shoulders
to face the day
This is you even before the ever hopeful
sense of yourself
gets up again
to see if things will go your way,
before the wistful sense
puts on its cloak of competence,
acceptability, arranges its opinions
and steps out into the fray
This is you before you win,
before you lose,
before you look in the mirror
or open your mouth.
This is you. You have your back.
You never need to step down
from your true essence
and your strength is plenty
to hold up the world.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 19, 2020
Now that I’m sure
all contests are over
(no one to tally my merits,
not even me)
What do I have but this day
and its sounds?
Trees dripping from recent rain,
blackbirds at the pond,
towhees and turkeys,
sparrows and mourning doves,
others whose names I don’t know
What do I have but this day
and its learnings, steps on the ground
through the rain loosened mud,
things we will build, and things that will wash away,
What do I have but this day?
©Wendy Mulhern
May 18, 2020
This slow lesson
I seem to have to learn
so many times –
should be a simple thing,
and so it is, extremely so –
the lesson of the One
No being right for me
if it’s a wrong for someone else,
no inner constructs
dividing me from others,
no chambers in my house
kept dark by unkind thoughts,
nothing in myself that I deny
One truth to hold my threads together
One light to shine all the way through
One law to clarify all my perceptions
till I’m transparent, till I’m shone anew.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 16, 2020
We learn the value
of things we thought were nothing,
things we thought were torments,
places we thought empty
All these must bow,
they are compelled,
just at their striking point,
to show their truth, release their mystery,
must give place to the law
that only blessing comes,
and only good is given –
the law that turns them upside down,
makes of their threats
windows to heaven.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 14, 2020
This is the kind of day the land needs,
drinking the rain, soothed and eager,
catching a different kind of breath
when the rain stops, and sun catches
the bright raindrops on leaves and flowers
As for us, we try to do our outside tasks
between the showers, sometimes successful,
sometimes caught, while our dirt road
swims with red-brown rivulets,
and plants flatten for a moment, till the next,
when we can almost see them growing.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 14, 2020
Truth can’t be a theory.
It has to be a thing that’s here,
that makes itself felt
in the bright coursing of strength
through limbs and loins,
that fills your mind and heart
with clarity, that speaks in the voice
more intimate than your own,
guides your feet in strides
along the high ridges,
shows you your sovereignty,
makes every step your home.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 13, 2020
My world is full of sounds at play –
phrases flit frivolous through my day:
“Pot and matches, pot and matches
go together like a plot that hatches “
(it’s a mnemonic,
it’s not symphonic,
and it isn’t about smoking –
it’s for making oatmeal)
With a spoon and a bowl
and a sprinkle of soul
and a knife and a fork
and equations for torque
Through the rain and the sun
with the work never done
but the days ever full of their splendor
and lines that would do well to end here.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 12, 2020
Unless everyone gets into heaven,
nobody does,
for it wouldn’t be heaven
without each of us
It couldn’t be heaven
without including
the utter end of condemnation,
that nobody can be a loser,
no one lost, no one left out
And everyone who’s been annoyed by me,
and anyone for whom I’ve felt annoyance –
We’ll all be reconciled, we’ll be forgiven,
and thus experience
the peace that is the reign of heaven.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 11, 2020
How refreshing, how truly inspiring,
how brilliantly illuminating it is
not to sit in the seat of the scornful,
not to have a belittling thought for anyone
Not to be gnawed from within
by a terror of nothingness,
not to claw my way away from there
by setting up a structure upon which to perch
from where to look down on others
How wide the view,
now that the seat is taken down,
leaving so much more room
to see the gift that each one is.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2020