Now that my hope is fully uncoupled
from the day’s outcomes,
now that it holds itself
in its own light,
I can see shoots sprouting
where before, perhaps,
the weight of my wishes
would have smothered them
I have no wishes,
only conviction
that every living thing
forms in this sacred space
of weightless hope,
nurtured to fruition
by the attention,
in wave form contiguity,
to every breath.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 25, 2019
All we ever wanted
was to be reunited
with our source,
to be in that communion
like water is
as it travels on its journeys
to be reunited with itself,
as it carries light in liquid ripples
through rills and streams
All we wanted
was that certainty
of what we are —
that we are good,
that we are one
with that which lights us up within
We may pursue our winding path
through darkness,
but it’s the gleams of light that lift us
and our light reflecting essence
that guides us
(as we will see when we look)
to everything we wanted.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 24, 2019
I lay the broken pieces on the altar
that they might be knit together by light,
that it might bathe them and envelope them
and be all the space between them
till no space is left unfilled
and they will be full,
and their former gaps will now be
the most precious of their substance,
and their former shards
will be cherished reminders
of what I hoped for long ago,
and that, in the light,
nothing is lost.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 23, 2019
We keep on circling home
like coins that spin and fall
and ring and ring
before they find their still point
We circle home
and our sudden sadnesses
bring us up short.
It may be a long fly
before we realize
we never left.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 22, 2019
The gentle laws that hold us
don’t need us to understand —
we can have wildly different concepts,
we can have our faith placed
in all manner of nothings,
we can be full of worry
for all the ways those nothings let us down
The gentle truth is not impressed
by where our minds may roam —
whether we fall or climb,
whether we stall or rage,
whether we pine or ponder,
or place is still assured
The stillness, somehow,
will approach us, will wait,
will be there when we pause,
will catch us up in welcome arms,
settle us in
to where we’ll know for sure that we belong.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 21, 2019
Light comes in the morning,
orange, then gold, then white gold,
etches shadow filagree on walls through windows,
folds its glow through cracks of doors
And if I simply don’t allow
for any place to be untouched,
if I let light bathe every curve of thought,
I’ll leave no place inside for dread or worry,
I’ll entertain no images of scorn
And if, like sun, my love is humble,
indiscriminate because its source is infinite,
it will leave space for birds to shine and sing
in their own language, and smiles to well up
from their profoundest depth.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 20, 2019
My sense of beauty is enchanted
by this transition time
where windows show
the view and the reflection
at the same strength
and illustrate
things that go through each other —
inhabit the same space
without touching,
move according to their own lights,
their own laws —
coexisting
only in the eyes and minds
of those observing.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 18, 2019
There were shining lights and flashing lights,
mirrored in multiples,
double exposures — reflected people
passing through actual buses,
there was the whirring roar within the terminal
while buses on the outside glided ghostly
We had the vibrations
of day-long air travel
with little food,
and rain outside, and remnants
of earlier snow (which had delayed our flight
and made us miss our planned bus)
All in all, as real, surreal,
as anything, as anywhere,
travel being, in some sense,
our constant state,
home also being
as real as we could make it.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 17, 2019
What makes a day prosaic?
Surely it’s not a quality of light
or the result of designated tasks,
or the company kept
or the internal landscape of my mind
All of these are full of poetry,
each, when focused, accesses a portal
opening, kaleidoscopic,
to infinity
Maybe it’s the flurry,
the attention taken
by stringed disparate tasks —
how they get loaded
in the barrel of efficiency
and lobbed forth —
how then I fail to feel
the gravity, and poetry, of each.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 16, 2019
Here’s me practicing again,
and my piano practice is rough.
Maybe because it’s plagued
with the same thing that slowed
my other practice, in times past —
a sense I’d done enough, I shouldn’t
have to — it should come to me
by now — it’s come to others —
surely by now I’ve worked
as much as they …
Here’s me applying a lesson
to myself: as with that practice,
so with this — it takes immersion.
It takes abandoning, entirely,
thoughts of time and measurement.
It takes the humbleness
to be the instrument
of what is coming through …
If I can do it there,
well, the question is,
am I willing to do it here?
©Wendy Mulhern
December 14, 2019