Life, as it turns out,
is not always instructional —
less and less so, in fact, these days
There is a statement
in the curl and color of a fallen leaf,
the reddened stems
of blackberry and bracken fern
But they don’t seek to teach,
just to be,
just to let the light of this one
moment of afternoon
glow through them,
just to rest in light gravity
against the cool ground,
or to stand still
in the pauses between the wind.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 26, 2019
I tell myself, in those days
I didn’t understand much about love,
though I did love
(as now I see we all do)
haplessly, perhaps,
helplessly at times,
with an intensity that could have been a key
I didn’t understand love’s power,
didn’t know to use it
so the ones I loved would feel encouraged,
safe, encircled, ready to go forth
to meet their own exigencies with love
I ask myself, well,
how much more of love
do you know now?
And are you able
to shine the light in such a way
that it illuminates instead of blinding?
And if I am, and when I am,
then all those other times of love
will also be redeemed.
That is the way of love,
and love will teach me how.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 25, 2019
You’ll hardly recognize your demons
when they’re sitting, clothed,
at their master’s feet
They may be sheepish about
their former torment,
they may want you to understand
they really only meant to help
They wanted you to get to this point
of peace that’s larger
than any field in which you’ve been ashamed,
and any field in which you’ve been afraid —
a peace in which they have no role at all
They never would have let you settle
for a small corner of being OK —
they wanted this huge place for you,
where you can smile, and rest, and breathe.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 23, 2019
Before the sun set,
the first silvered wisps of fog
began to form low in the valley,
tending slightly upward
as they drifted south
Five minutes later
the valley had begun to fill,
fog rising between trees
setting off the different distances,
the fall colors looked more red
amid the rising clouds
Meanwhile, behind the hills,
the sun had set
and the sky was turning red,
marbled and magnificent
And I thought: here, just here,
is exactly where I want to be,
above this valley and on this journey,
upward as I’m led, attended by beauty.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 22, 2019
I looked out the window
and thought of how the names
of colors (or lack of names)
affect the way we see,
and prayer and fasting
and what it means to believe
I tended the fire
and drank my tea
and considered what it means
to lose all faith in death,
and what life is
if it’s not temporal
Outside the ravens
were droll and musical,
the cat was eager for my lap,
and if I’m able to cast out demons,
I’m also willing. I take that with me
into my day.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 21, 2019
Our enslavement lifts like fog.
Our freedom begins to shine
like fresh-washed air —
Though there may be
many layers till we walk
fully unencumbered,
till we fly
in the manner we’ve always desired,
every little liberation
makes us stand taller,
lets us breathe deeper,
gives us the grace
to love each other
with more generosity and kindness,
shows us that we all are moving
through the same layers of clearing,
our eyelids tingling with the dew of heaven.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 20, 2019
We are hungry for stories,
for story is the mind’s path,
the promise
that we could wend our way
out of the dullness of where we think we are
to something redemptive,
something we can almost taste
And we are foiled
by the devil’s practice
of shoving the tails of the stories
into their mouths, of making sure
they only lead us back
to the same place
We are foiled by opposition —
by the assertion
that stories require enemies —
good guys and bad guys,
even if only in our own minds
There is a truer story.
It exists in the place before the impulse,
before the thought. It exists
in searing lifting pure light
of your still unnamed desire,
and if you follow it,
it will lead you home.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 19, 2019
You: What are you thinking about?
Me: Same thing I always —
You: Oh, God …
Me: That’s exactly right
You: And me, I’m thinking about
what I always think about, too …
(a pause, we snuggle in)
…the house — how to build it,
what to do next
The wonder of it is
that we can come together,
or almost — good enough
to keep the project going
day after week after year.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 17, 2019
Subtly, the palette changes —
bracken ferns to brown,
grasses back to green,
gold and orange along the river,
water vapor’s silver sheen
We raced the rain
all day yesterday
while the sun slowly made room
for more and more clouds
and the cat hunted happy in the field
and the needed tasks got done
And this morning,
rain holding off for just a while,
you added final touches
so now we can look up
and see the colors
and watch the rain.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 16, 2019
It may look like death
when someone breaks through the skin
of the world, of the dream —
they may seem to fall out of it
and others may mourn
It’s only when you look closely
at the hole they made,
when, for a moment,
you see the light streaming in,
you might get the inkling
there’s something beyond this shell,
you might start trying
to learn what it is.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 14, 2019