In the instant vision
I saw the way your touch
took its place
in the work of restoring
the radiating order —
how it gave everyone
a key thing they needed
to relax in inner peace
and look up
I saw it as a token
for how we each
will find our place
and fill in the grand design.
Broken filaments will twine themselves
back together
and the whole world
will light up.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 4, 2020
We watched the water change.
No sun to set, but gray and russet
tones darkened, something less than wind
ruffled the water, pleating the reflections,
bringing the lighter and the darker
lines across the surface
I don’t know where to put this,
you said. I don’t know where
to put anything,
not here, not anywhere.
I don’t know why I’m crying.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2020
A year to see with clearer eyes,
a year to walk away from lies,
a year to speak the nuanced truth,
a year to listen and to hear
A year to seek the unity of mind,
a year to leave the rhetoric behind,
to find the sanity of quiet voices
and leave the ruts of falsely defined choices
It could be now, it could be just the time
to cease our flailing and take on the steady climb,
and in the face of so much we could fear
it still may be a fine, auspicious year.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 2, 2020
(from the biking philosophers’ notebook)
I wouldn’t want a tame bird,
she said. Wild birds
have so much life. They don’t
need our bread
Still, a wild bird
could take you somewhere,
in the trill of song,
the dip and dart of wing
You could have a relationship
with the badlands. They could
take your breath away
in the way they pull the light
like it was a silk scarf
or a skein of time
stretched and altered,
rendered otherworldly
You could find a related essence
in a baby’s smile, in the flash
of that moment where you shared
a recognition of each other’s souls,
your unplumbed depth,
or a mutual acceptance
that lets you both stay wild
in some elemental way,
elixir of living,
life breath of day.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 1, 2020
We approach the year’s end
as uncelebrating
as every brown leaf
that blows along the ground,
as every squirrel that scuffles
among the leaves,
as every insect sleeping in its dried up stalk,
as all the crows that have gone home by now
It’s just one day into the next,
the rain, the fog, the winter light,
the stillness of the evening,
the morning’s breath
In other times, in other energies,
we made a mark here,
found some significance,
some grand design for change,
but this time round we’re flying low,
conserving strength,
hugging the curve of darkness
till the light returns.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 31, 2019
Sorrow has its season,
not as master, but as shadow,
a reminder of emptiness
and the song that fills it
Sorrow brings us
down through the wet passage
of echoes, dark shiny walls
and the sound of dripping
We will know how deep we are
as sorrow plumbs us.
We’ll come out richer
on the other side.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 30, 2019
For a moment I forgot
that joy is unconditional —
I looked around, and saw,
then felt, the sadness
everywhere it lay along
the tragic and the casual
occurrences of unfulfilled conditions
The sighs arising
slip like wisps above them,
hover haunted, sink on down —
it’s easy to believe
no answer can be found for anyone
But joy is unconditional —
it cracks like a smile,
bounds up like a bubble,
flows, light filled,
through all the places
where things seemed so sad.
This is not a big problem, actually —
it’s just time to claim our heritage.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 29, 2019
(from the biking philosopher’s notebook)
You don’t own your spark
but you owe it —
owe it your attention,
your time, your thought, your care
You can’t use your spark to serve you —
you serve it —
give it everything you are,
all you can do
And in return
it will mature,
become a flame, become a light,
you will be nourished in its service,
even known by it —
it will make you what you are
and guide your every step
and as you tend it daily,
it will be your life.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 28, 2019
It isn’t bad
to have to cry
in spite of how
the sun has spun
the grass heads into gold
and wind has gently ruffled ducks
and all in all
it was a fine day
These low points
come in sometimes
like nomad clouds
that mass and gather
and move through —
They will go as silently
as they came. Either today
or tomorrow — whether
bringing rain or not.
Either the sun will melt them
or bright laughter
will chase them off.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 27, 2019
At the delicious edge of sleep —
the doors of dream enticingly ajar
(or maybe they are more like pools
or limbs exploring towards infinity)
From that alluring edge
I’m reeled back in —
your voice, or at another time
your finger tapping —
engendering my dull reluctant rise
through layers swiftly shredding
back to here
And so my softest thing to do
is laugh —
it shimmers with releasing ripples,
keeps my thought from coalescing solid,
allows my sleepy drift
back toward the edge …
©Wendy Mulhern
December 26, 2019