We’re all trying to go home.
The flailing stumbling is part of it,
the bold euphoric leaps are, too,
as is the boisterous chatter
and the quiet yearning,
as are the careful plans
and the impulsive searching
We’re all trying to be home,
and we will find it,
because it isn’t far
from every one of us,
for in home
we live and move and have our being.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 24, 2016
Winter is not finished.
Perhaps it has not even begun —
it paces wide fields, pauses
in wooded corners,
turns with an abrupt flourish
of long, dark cloak,
releasing torrents — wind and rain,
maybe even snow
Head down, it broods,
and now and then
lifts blazing eyes
to meet your gaze,
to draw you in.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 22, 2016
In this threadbare place
where I can no longer settle
for the flimsy garments
of my past, fake life,
for the oppressive garb
of my appointed station
Where I have yet to find
the robes of power and of justice
(though I have dreamed them
oh so many times)
I stand in rags
but not for long
The force that makes me,
that places me at rest,
possessing a prodigious energy
I’ve yet to tap,
that gives me everything I’ve ever been
and all I am to be,
that grants deep decency to all,
will clothe me, too.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 21, 2016
(or how to heal the world)
There is no grid of time or space
through which we move,
tracked along the x axis
through the highs and lows
of daily random y’s
These lines bend at our will,
we hold them, gathered,
in our hands,
we roll them out
through all the planes of consciousness —
they move at our command
We are not in the world, rather,
the world is in us,
so in the steadying of ourselves,
we steady it —
we calm it, reassure it, and set it
gently on its course.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 20, 2016
Having fallen from the story
(like a lost glove, in the rain,
the present sodden reality
seeping unmistakably in)
I find I am no longer concerned
with what will happen
in that white paper world
that knows no wetness
And I sense the presence
of others. Ah! There is a heart bond
in this shared element. We see
it doesn’t matter what you fell from.
It never really mattered,
even up there. Down here
we instinctively reach for each other.
We bind each other up
We open all our senses
(many that we never knew we had)
to take in the nuances
of this emerging truth.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 19, 2016
Here is how I let go
of the string of worry,
here is how I keep it
from pulling me sideways,
from making me say things
(in my resultant wobbliness)
that make the air tense between us:
I let go by remembering
no one has ever soared
with worry on her wings,
and if we lived by worry
we couldn’t move at all
We are in Mind
and nowhere else,
and Mind knows us balanced,
and Mind designs all the spaces —
the flow of us,
the cushioning air,
the trail and all the riders on it,
and their balance and their thoughts.
It’s the nature of Mind
to be harmony — we are all expressions
of one grand idea.
We can’t fall out of it,
so we can’t crash. So there’s no place
for worry here.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 18, 2016
Truth is,
you need to trust
your inner ear,
your source of balance,
your intonation,
and no attempts to balance you
from over here
can be of any use. I need to trust
that you will calibrate
and find your finest tuning
on your own
Truth is,
I need to trust
my inner voice
and not let it be silenced
by reasons formed somewhere outside
the center of my being —
by my mistrusts, or by concerns
of others, or second-guessing
how its counsel is perceived.
I need to hone its clarity
by listening and following
and holding true,
even if I’m not sure why I do.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 17, 2016
Still longing for
the completed circuit,
the gathering of everything,
the fulfilled promise,
putting it all to bed
at end of day
Longing for that,
even as the greater light
begins to rise,
providing higher resolution,
where the dearly held
dream of reconciliation
is subsumed
by the fact of oneness.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 15, 2016
This smoothing truth
silences the petty bean counter
who tallies wrongs
and weighs the price
of full forgiveness
It spills the beans
(shiny and hard,
skidding and bouncing) —
they roll off to find
their ground, their soil,
their splitting and swelling
and becoming
And as for us —
this truth counts us whole,
counts us in.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 14, 2016
When you let go,
your laughter is so gentle,
and the unforgiving angles
cease to jab at me
and strain at us
I can rest easy
in the suppleness
of thought suffused
with the powerful melting force
of love, of soft surrender,
enabling flow and sweet intermingling
as we ripple and tumble
into clarity.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 13, 2016