I will feel safe
when I know
there is no way
I can fall from grace
in your eyes
by being myself
Then I will stretch
into the farthest edges
of myself. I will wake up
all my toes, my fingertips
and my wings. My skin,
and all the currents within me,
my stride, my dance, my rhythm,
my hearing and my vision
All this will feel secure
in the fine deep space
you hold for me
in the warmth of your gaze,
in the kindness of your eyes.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 12, 2016
You are not your shopping cart
nor the objects in it,
nor the course it rolls on the ground
with its creaky clumsiness
You are not the tracks through your life
that bring you here
to the bright lights
and the high aisles
with their choices of nothingness
You are not the cage-like strictures
for which you make up your face
and hair, and clothing,
you are not the brittle, limited options
of what to be in this world
You are amazing.
And you are sovereign —
In your being
is the understanding
of how to walk free,
in your hands
the limitless richness
that comes from your source,
the infinite power to bless,
the simple end
to this atrocious farce,
the dynamo inherent in
I Am.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 11, 2016
When I’m still,
and ask for it,
the inspiration comes up swift,
quick welling from the deepest pools within me,
sudden flowing, as if struck from rock
But truly
relying on catchment —
all the collected liquid
from the upper hills
coalescing down, bubbling out,
Clearly not a thing conjured
with tricks of thought,
clearly testament to my context,
to the terrain in which I rise,
natural as weeds, as springs,
as love,
from every cradling crevice.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 10, 2016
I will take nothing with me,
no preparations, no opinions,
no preconceptions as to
what I may contribute,
what I may receive,
no assessments of the problems
or the limits, no concerns
about the inputs or the outcomes
I will take nothing with me
but the promise
that what I need will arise
in the alchemy of interaction,
in the provision, in the book of Life,
for the perfect meeting of everything
and the exultant spark
of the connection
that lights up all the stars
that comprise our presence.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 9, 2016
Draw me in, hold me close.
If there never was safety
in the circles that we drew
around ourselves, around our clan,
defining insiders and outside,
making structural strength
in the arc of joining arms
If there never was a safety
of tastes, of languages —
if all this is, as we see,
unceremoniously swept away
(that, or eaten steadily from inside)
There still is safety
in the unity of what we are,
the blessedness we sense as ours,
and the desire for it that always
draws us to our source
Draw me in,
for here is where we find
the common breath, the common voice
that sings us ever
safe and sound
resounding through our days.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 8, 2016
The day lightens,
not through any effort on my part.
The sun warms, the load lifts,
the promises assert their buoyancy,
rising like swift bubbles
through my heaviness,
leavening. Filling out
the wispy dreams,
making them solid,
giving them color.
It suffuses me
like blush,
with strength, with hope.
My feet reach down
and settle in
and find their ground.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 6, 2016
It’s not a great work, this —
my daily journal, my daily
survival. Not insights to broadcast,
to make headlines, to go viral.
Just one chronicle
of one daily quest, one daily effort,
one life shining. All I can do.
Still enough, perhaps,
to save my own soul
And who knows what worlds
are contained in each salvation?
How many trees might be
in one apple?
©Wendy Mulhern
January 5, 2016
My mind feels inscrutable
as this still, gray day —
neither stormy nor yet
becoming night
There are no impending howls
and no exhilaration —
I am tempted to shut down
and wait for a clearer dawn.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 4, 2016
(Creative Etymology)
If heaven is the breathing of everything,
the generous heave of the earth,
the inspiration, the release
across the days, the months,
the seasons,
the ever-cycling peace,
the renewal that comes back around,
inciting curls of growth,
currents rising and branching,
sending new life ever outward,
ever inward
Then it is heaven
to move just like this,
in concert with the breathing
of earth and sea, of sky and stars,
where everything has room
for its own unfolding,
where everything is held
and everything is free.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2016
The sheen of sun on winter trees,
the gentle scrish of frost underfoot,
the taste of ice crystals and
the moss on which they grew,
the smell of rotted cabbage
The subtle sinking into
the movement of the moment,
the easy harmonizing
of glance and gesture,
the flash appreciation of a color palette,
the warmth that radiates
from trunks of trees
These are the gifts of the day
and the new year,
gifts, like manna,
collectible every day,
nourishing the present,
allowing tomorrow’s hunger
to fend for itself.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 2, 2016