The coolness of the air
brings sudden autumn,
a memory as strong as taste
of longing, of excitement
for things that might unfold
as they are borne along the quickening
fall of the year into endings
or new beginnings
A taste of bracing challenges
and rising skill that meets them,
the ramping up of inner heat
to warm us through
the passage of the cold
and take us once again
around the turn.
©Wendy Mulhern
Sept 3, 2014
What’s required of us
is not the yoke
of dutiful responsibility —
It’s the electric catching,
from fingertips and all awakened skin,
from eye-lights and light answers from within
of all the joy that fills this air, this place
Our light is required —
all of it —
in each dimension of our being,
all our hearing, all our seeing,
all we rise to meet,
all we live to prove,
all that comes to presence from our love.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 1, 2014
I never want to think
my time is worth more
than someone else’s,
or that my thoughts are,
or my words
I never want to not have
time to hear another
In this great work
of waking up
we all must rise together.
All must become awe-striking,
All must be met with wonder,
All be seen.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 31, 2014
Tonight the crickets’ chorus
sets an undulating braid,
The sound of fireworks punches through it —
staccato pops and cracks, keening whistles —
I’m not sure what they’re celebrating.
Tomorrow I go home
I dreamt of writing
in a pre-poem nap
but when I woke up
it was gone
There’s nothing in my sun-soaked head
but sleep.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 30, 2014
Love is buoyant —
It is not easily repressed
If undertows pull it beneath
turbulent waves,
If it drifts awhile submerged
in turbid green,
Its natural qualities
will still bear it along
until it surfaces,
salty and lusty,
alive and breathing in
the wonder of the power
in which it swims
and in its steadiness
and its continuance
as it proceeds to change
everything it beholds,
transforming it,
infusing it with light.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 28, 2014
photo by Heather Mulhern
Crickets play the song of stars
their endless, tireless variation
close your eyes
and you still hear them shining
Stars sing in cricket voices
bringing the far away
so gently near
powerful and steadfast
clear as the dark sky
true as the night.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 27, 2014
Our Father
Source of the sky, of the horizon,
of every tree and all the circling
patterns of connection,
impulse for the life that hums
in every kind of breathing
(When I see myself as
everything I can perceive, conceive,
then, in every pulse
you are the lift
that flies my desire)
Which art in heaven
Whose essence is the kiss
of bliss, the unimagined
rush of every hope fulfilled,
the peace of perfect, whirring
harmony
Hallowed be thy name . . .
(It takes a long time
to get through the prayer like this —
most of a bike ride —
even when I’m not distracted.
The streaming landscape helps me —
provides the illustration and the inspiration
on earth as it is in heaven).
©Wendy Mulhern
August 26, 2014
I see you in the waves —
your little boy laugh
in the small ones at the surface
light green glinting in translucence
catching merrily and falling back
breath held, bright bubbles rising
as he sinks
ecstatic with luckiness
treasure of the caught gift
weighty in his hand
In the large swells
I see your man strength
dark, rolling
rising at the right time
coming up with deep feeling
moving in the logic
of the present need
folding everything
into its potent flow.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 25, 2014
The water pitched and danced
before the clacking ferry
which churned through
unaffected by its heaving,
Light withdrew to shine from distant pinpoints,
Waves tended toward black
And when, around the chop
into the harbor
the boat slowed,
my temples pulsed in echo
of the wind’s pounding
and I was suddenly ravenous
and longed for the yellow kitchen
and its round table
Home loomed up
in the comforting darkness
around the lighted dock
Crickets confirmed
I had arrived.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 23, 2014
Look up,
or close your eyes —
it doesn’t matter
You can breathe this green
through your lips, through your pores
you can feast on light
You can sleep
or keep on looking
here in the presence of infinity,
here in the closeness
of this embrace.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 22, 2014