It’s February
but the yard is fragrant
with sweet box
and small birds are chattering
and the air is balmy
It’s not yet time
to go inside
though our outside tasks
are done —
It’s time to breathe this day
a little longer
while the tops of the fir
and the pine and the cedar
are full of sun.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 13, 2017
We come to this place
where we have agreed
that love is presence —
that if you are here
then you are loved,
and in your love is an expansive blessing,
more than we had dared to hope for.
We understand
there will be healing —
not in the sense of change
but as in coming into wholeness,
recognizing what we’ve always been.
We come to this place as refuge
from other patterns
that we have used to think about each other.
We put those aside here,
we learn not to use them,
we forget about them entirely,
caught up, as we are —
totally transfixed —
in this way of being love.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 12, 2017
Evening has rushed up to the windows
and peers in
at our curious cavern of time
after the day’s duties,
before a young night,
where the hope and emptiness of our prospects
converge
We found moments of calm today
in the pushing aside of many things,
our work, our waiting,
our restless wrestling,
and we heard, faintly,
the clear direction
that will pull us through the coming days
This evening will stitch itself closed
without our doing anything —
we will miss the bauble of a night out,
though we may gain
(as is our deeper need)
something timeless.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 11, 2017
What would you do
if you absolutely knew
you are loved — if you could
feel it inside
like a bright coal,
like a soft breath,
like the concentration of
everything you can take in
into one potent sphere inside yourself,
pulsing calmness and joy
in fountains, spilling laughter
bubbling and streaming
through your aura
What would you do
if you knew
the love you are
could light the same
in many others, anyone, in fact
that you can see?
©Wendy Mulhern
February 10, 2017
Be thankful for the day —
it is enough
to tuck the old man in,
to see the comfort
of soft sheets around his chin
It is enough
to have accomplished
the simple tasks
and to have felt the soft burn
of inner fire, curling
at the base of being,
connecting us to eternity
and the truth no lies can cover
and the clear direction that it gives,
untouched by any turbulence of time,
bearing us silently
into our role
as keepers of the stars.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 9, 2017
Am I, even still, in deep dream?
Or am I slowly waking?
is it possible all this could be
just what it seems,
or are we long mistaken?
My fumbling hands try to determine
what is freedom here, and what is chains.
I find I’m bound by what I thought was comfort,
I find I’m freed by my internal reins
And what may seem a heaving shift of landscape
may be the rift of an illusive scene,
and what may seem a fearful theft of power
may lift us up to finer, lucid being —
to grasp and taste the source of true delight:
illumining the universe with light.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 8, 2017
This morning I woke up remembering a poem about snow I wrote some years back. Then a friend wrote asking if I had any snow poems. I went and found it (preserved on paper!) It was from 2002. It violates a couple rules I have for myself now about writing poetry, but I still find it sweet, and it sings itself to me in the tune of Tallis’ Canon.
Oh night! hold snowfall, soft and wet,
do not give up your magic yet —
bring us your silent world again,
stay white — do not succumb to rain
When daylight next suffuses skies,
let white on white enchant our eyes,
let all be softness, all be still,
your clean caress our senses fill
Oh night of snowfall, soft and wet,
do not give up your magic yet!
Lace in sweet cold to hold the spell,
to keep each snowflake as it fell.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 27, 2002
As old containers fall away,
we each may find
we’re more cohesive
than we knew,
and now, no longer blocked off
from the places where
we always longed to grow,
we’ll send our shoots out
bold and green
We’ll be so much more wild and thick
than how we had been told
we had to be,
we’ll twine with others
who had been forbidden,
we’ll make a thicket, a collective tree
And we’ll hold ourselves together
not by rules and condemnation,
but by the gracious tendrils of our truth.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 5, 2017
It’s been a tough day —
large bungle spill
of ill-advised emotions
who rushed out blind,
not even slowing down
in their blustering forays
to hear the voice of their mom
who, had they listened,
would have counseled
that playing on this ground
always results in getting doused
in whatever slop you try to throw.
She could have guided them
to more productive fields,
but no, they had to go
and try to conquer
in all the places
where they had to fail.
No matter. Tonight
she will tuck them in.
They will sleep. Tomorrow
she will try again
to help them get up in the sun.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 4, 2017
From this side
it feels like Spirit sifts me
and all that is opaque
falls by its weight
while all that is transparent
dances and shines,
proving its substance
by how it stands unmoved
by tugs upon it,
and how it swoops and dives
unwavering from Spirit
It is my heart’s deep joy
to be found thus,
and I sense
that from the other side
there is no sifting,
but just that Spirit
knows its own.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 2, 2017