It is a day of no obligations
and no great ambitions
and enough heat to arrest
in mid stride
most anything we might try
Yet we have managed
to do a few things
and get some water
to our seedling dreams
and as the blessed coolness
stirs the evening,
we will sleep well
and grow a little newer.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 3, 2015
In the clutter of the stories
I’m prone to tell myself,
there is danger of getting lost
This time I check myself
against the gravity
of how this offering
will feel to you
I check its underside
for hints of instruction
(which might imply
I thought you needed change)
I check to see if its assertions
are made from wish fulfillment
on my part
Nothing but my pure love
is worthy of you.
Nothing but my pure love
is worthy of me.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 2, 2015
A bland eraser
comes to wipe out
random moments
of my consciousness
It doesn’t leave a blank, though —
underneath awakeness,
images present themselves,
colorful and almost plausible,
shrinking quickly as my conscious thought returns
So some intentions go unfilled,
some straight lines
fade out before they designate
appropriate direction
But there is a circle,
a full, embracing circle
that goes all the way around
this sense of what I am,
and keeps me whole.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 1, 2015
Well, maybe I shouldn’t have
left the meeting early —
Maybe I succumbed
to divisive voices,
allowed myself the story
that my best work
would be what I did alone
When I could have known
the present need
was for my present attention
to everything in my own thought
that was ruffled
by the words of others
My need was to stand guard
against suggestions of polemic,
to find the higher embracing way
where everyone feels at home.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 30, 2015
In this heat I find
a slight ache
at the top of my breath
like what’s induced by smog
or chlorine, fixtures of my childhood summers
where laughter bounced in water echoes
around the family pool
and the splashing plunge
brought sweet relief
from heat we watched evaporate
the water we spread thin
along the dark pool edge
while we rested, getting ready
for the next dip
Now I allow myself
the full breath, up and into the ache
because of that feeling’s bridge
to early days.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 29, 2015
I must be tired from leaning forward,
he says. Too much living in the future,
in the plans, in the questions
of how to make everything
come out right
Yes, let’s take a break,
let’s lean into the day, ride for awhile
on the motes of the moment
and the three-caw council of crows
and letting it all go,
even the leaning.
Let the day come to me, he says.
At its own pace.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 28, 2015
I’ve learned my lesson:
I will accept every gift,
whether it’s clothed in joy or sadness,
whether it’s bright or dark
I won’t hold out
for what I think I need,
I won’t require a certain protocol.
I will receive each gift
by diving in to where I find the blessing,
and how I, too, will bless in the receiving
I will let myself be changed
in every way that’s needed
to settle every gift into my heart.
After all, these are not things
that take up space, that need garages
These are soul offerings —
there’s room for all of them,
and they imbue my days with purpose
and with color, form, and depth.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 27, 2015
We abandon the paper cut-outs
and start to work with the real thing:
The dimensions are astonishing —
we could take years just reveling
in these curves, these planes, these hollows
to say nothing of movement
and that amazing contiguity
that remains itself while changing form
minutely and infinitely, the very breathing of it,
let alone the leaps and curls
and then there is the blessed heat,
the contact
and the wind-engendering spins
This has nothing to do
with where we were playing before.
Our hearts race to be here,
we keep waking up, more and more.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 25, 2015
It doesn’t matter what your demons are.
Demons are not a factor in the work.
It doesn’t matter who has told you
for however long
that you’re not worthy
It doesn’t matter
what your regimens have been,
how you have marshaled all your forces,
whether you succeeded,
how you failed
This one thing
is revealed to you
beneath all that,
for once not requiring of you
any kind of change,
for once not measuring you
against any standard
except yourself,
to which you stand exactly
as you were made to be —
so loved, so celebrated,
so ineffably perfect
at being who you are.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 24, 2015
This love was always
such a simple thing —
love of your bones, your limbs,
your snuggle, your warm, heavy head
How could I fail so utterly
to know my only duty
was to pass that love still gleaming,
my bone to yours, shiny and smooth,
clear, unequivocal,
holy and pure?
Here is my prayer —
in your presence to see
that this crucial transmission
has always been given,
with joy to perceive
that you’ve always received it,
it never depended on me.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 23, 2015