Considering a vow of internal silence,
I practice. Let my times proceed
without a narrative, let me take things in
constructing no instructions,
let me see people
without drawing conclusions.
In the ensuing quiet
I may hear
the jokes the ravens tell
across the hills.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 18, 2019
(in the aftermath of tepid soup)
It wasn’t the soup at all.
It was the opportunity
(missed that time)
to reassess my disappointment
and what I swallowed
by accepting
that what I needed for my comfort
was heat,
and then in thinking,
when I couldn’t get it,
that all there was for me to do
was settle
It wasn’t that I should have found
some perfect way to ask again —
this was a portal
(missed that time)
to seeing things in terms of life
instead of soup,
being supported by
(thus bearing witness to)
the ever present river
comforting us all.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 17, 2019
I still am a novice at fire,
as it reminds me, morning and evening,
demanding my humble attentiveness,
first in the building
and then in the watching
what the first flicker will do
I look for the rushing of flames,
the roaring of yellow filling the firebox,
I look for the holes where it falters,
I seek to provide what it needs
As reward, I’m provided
with myriad metaphors
curling and licking,
warming my thought —
fire within takes on a new meaning,
lighting my day with its art.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 15, 2019
Your being gone
tells me acutely
all this is dream,
all this is dream
I see its edges —
see where the tapestry
meets the loom,
the threads I chose,
how they were woven,
how they have made
what is depicted here
It isn’t sorrow
so much as recognition —
how what I thought and feared
became this picture,
and from this standpoint
my hope is greater
that I will see, sometime,
all that is real.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 14, 2019
Children emerge from the library
paired with parents
and two steps out the door
they invariably
break into running or dancing or singing,
bouncing against their parent’s staider gait
like leaves caught by the autumn breeze,
pent up from stillness
now released —
as rich a gift to me
as the tall oak trees,
resplendent red above,
speaking of community,
a place that cares for them.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 13, 2019
Though I talk about
techniques for survival,
I really mean
ways to maintain joy —
there is a level
where it amounts to the same thing
And it’s easy to find uplift
in the faces of young fathers
and their children,
in reachings out for connection,
in all these things that
right now
are of utmost importance to people,
however fleetingly they catch
the light-elixir that sustains us all.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 12, 2019
With just a couple wrong turns,
I found myself in sorrow,
but sensed that every story
to present itself as cause
must be a lie
I will not grasp at them —
they are not even straws —
their only function
would be to tie me up in knots
It’s better to just let the sorrow
be its color of wet charcoal,
of eyes clamped shut,
the brown green of sobs
providing variegation
Better to walk through long grass
and give some little willows
a second chance to grow
beside the pond,
better to breathe
and look up at the day
and let the darkness be unnamed
and let the light in.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 11, 2019
I find myself suddenly hungry
for fiction, for magic,
for peppermint mochas
in well-lighted places,
for time to get lost in a book
At the end of my dream
I found myself flying,
flapping huge wings
that started as arms,
down the dirt and gravel road
through the woods,
back to the cabin
I stayed up late last night
reading and tending the fire
till I was too sleepy to continue.
The sleepiness returned today
before the work was over,
and the book was also calling me
We’ll go home soon,
and dreams will be my friends,
giving me story while they also
give me rest.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 10, 2019
This wilderness was prepared
especially for me,
like the belly of a fish
but not so dark and slimy
This wilderness
holds me cocooned
in the place that best promotes
my growth. No room to squiggle,
no chance to be distracted,
to opt out. No way to go
but forward, upward
along the tough but bracing trail
This wilderness
leaves no space for complaint,
Its beauty overwhelms me,
its demands
make me strong. I will stay here
for as long as is required.
I will stay until directed to the city.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 9, 2019
Everybody’s life
is just … their life —
the places where they fell,
and where they failed,
the losses of their hopes,
the pooling grief
There’s no comparison of lives —
not one person’s with another’s,
not one person’s, with what it might have been,
no one gets to have
the biggest joy, the deepest grief,
a story more worth telling than another
No one is cursed,
each one is blessed,
and underneath all the questions
is that simple fact,
the place everyone’s life
is trying to get to,
where nothing that happened matters,
and everything that is, does.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 8, 2019