The birds seemed as happy as we were
for the return to the land,
for the spring
or its precursor,
the time of prodigious effort
we can now set to,
the time for making home
and for noticing
that it’s here.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 24, 2020
We may look and find the place
where fear was painted
up in the mauve underside of your scales,
making your protection prickle,
making you uneasy underneath
We will hold you so gently
as we rinse you clean,
all of that pigment
making it take a long time
till the water runs clear
You will feel it then,
the knitting together — yourself
with yourself, the relief
of the new clean place,
the integration, now that there is no foreign substance,
the power rallying within
You can rest now
and let yourself absorb
what it is to be fully you.
You’ll reach out open
to make the true connection,
the flash through you
and us
that lights the land.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 23, 2020
My feet suddenly remember
how they tingle in damp grass —
my toes stretch and grasp the feeling
and I consider
taking off my socks and going out
It is as they remember —
a little colder, maybe,
and the grass bends flatter underfoot.
There are fir cones in the grass,
small birds trilling from afar,
and soft socks to return to
in the house.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 22, 2020
Not in a map
so much as a practice —
the practice of presence,
the practice of catching
the tiny upliftments
each moment holds —
the silent flowing,
the intricate crystalization,
the clasp of life,
always a celebration,
every living thing reprising
life’s essential properties,
joy ever being what rises
like oxygen, what fills and blesses,
what confirms my being here.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 20, 2020
Since my body had been
soaked in kindness,
it had no voice to complain —
it wanted to stay there
in the memory and present fact
of kindness,
where it confessed
it was eager to learn,
eager to do anything I might ask
It was willing to abandon
any tales of injury or weakness
and just stay there in the aura
the kindness had bestowed
When it next moved
it was a different body
than the one I had walked in before.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 19, 2020
New language arises
in the differentiation of essential oils,
in the attention to small details —
freshness and sequence and timing
There are places in this noticing
for gratitude to take hold
with confident grip
to entrances too small to see —
thread hairs of its roots
reaching in and changing the ground
with what it brings
and what it calls forth.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 18, 2020
The silk I was washing
tore in my hands like wet paper,
myriad holes appearing
in what before was whole cloth,
my innocent fingers proving themselves deadly,
hapless
The oil from the orange you described
stayed on my fingers
and my lips,
its presence in thought
so immediate, so important
Ways of seeing things fall away,
suddenly proved unable
to hold truth in them,
new images tingle,
evocative, potent,
their scent suffusing everything.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 17, 2020
Tailwind now — enjoy your ride —
you will have headwind
on the other side,
strong gusts will blast
and beat you down
all the way along the sound
But wait — no need to prearrange —
winds make no promises —
they change,
in their direction and their force,
with no attention to your course
See how today you are attended —
someone who the wind’s befriended,
playful with your hair,
playfully pushing you along,
freshening the air
and joining in your song
So bring that spirit home —
bring it on inside,
until the new engagement
of tomorrow’s ride.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 16, 2020
This is not about how you need to be,
This is about what you are.
How you need to be
is so, well, needy —
it chafes against your brows, your lungs,
it sighs, it paces,
it rides itself with a crop
(gee up!) it stumbles forth
half hearted
What you are
is not like that —
it moves gracefully,
like light on water —
weightless, unsinking, delighted,
responsive, here to serve,
generous, whole and tender hearted,
receiving the reward of its own being.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 15, 2020
It isn’t a unifying force —
It’s much more gentle than that,
simple as sunshine, the present fact
of what’s here, of what properties
always are seen
in the way things move,
the way they interact
We can know we belong
in any here we find ourselves,
because we, too,
move like that —
gentle necessity,
the nature in which we rise.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 14, 2020