In feeding we are fed,
In meeting we are met,
In every act of willingness
to come forth empty to the touch point,
we are filled
The fountain rises bubbling
from the awe-struck rock,
The flames burst out
from the friction’s spark,
The inspiration rushes
suddenly and steadily
into the open space
prepared by humbleness
for great paths of wind
sweeping into the deepest chambers,
touching the quick,
igniting swift
life fire within.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 20, 2014
In retrospect
it all seems so familiar —
the heady feeling of approaching mastery,
the sense of having found a solid answer
and the immediate response
of some overwhelming inundation —
a storm in my internal weather,
an interpersonal nor’easter,
or some flash flood to carry off
all my pat conclusions,
forcing me to let myself be washed through,
re-oriented, stripped of all pretensions,
surrendering, as ever,
to the larger wisdom
to clarify my sense
and make me new.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 19, 2014
Afterwards, we drove up through
the scattered, shattered landscape,
houses like detritus flung against the fences
of suburban grids,
the actual people
clinging for survival
to the few pursuits that patch
their massive loneliness,
and maybe they don’t even know
the tide has gone out on their sustenance . . .
We thought about city repair,
and the work seemed so massive —
to create a structure
that belongs to us
and not the advertisers and investors.
But we have begun:
In this day we worked together
moving earth, transplanting hope
(represented here by many strawberries),
making connections which, with care
will spread in a great mat
and bear its fruit where everyone can share.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 18, 2014
What does your heart want?
This one thing you can answer
without words, without posture,
without a sense of needing to be right
What your heart wants now
is how you’ll know
what to do. No definitions of yourself,
based on observations or conjectures
or the self-filtered opinions of your fellows,
have any clue
What does your heart want?
When asked, your heart will answer
in the impulse of a movement,
in the wisdom of the moment
and you’ll know yourself
by following its truth.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 17, 2014
Oh, I have been fooled
so many times,
so nearly constantly —
Cowed by an unnamed fog
to fail to move
(lest in moving I should fail),
to fail to see
(lest I see something that would wake me
to the need to move)
But now I will name the fog
and feel the fear roll off
in great waves,
billowing and blowing and dispersing
And I will stand
in new-created day.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 15, 2014
In this vision,
the antelopes are tuned
into existence,
huge waves of them
rolling in and out of
atmospheric haze,
keenly aware of their
sharp pounding against the ground
in the rolling rhythm of multitude
and the strong smell of each other
and the heat and dust
and the surging imperative importance
of life, this now
in which they run.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 14, 2014
In my not quite dreaming state
I felt like another person,
someone who was sleeping on my other side,
someone who had another stairway,
chocolate colored, smooth like pudding,
that she could climb
to another story.
The draft on my back
that kept me awake
also made me feel alive —
small bursts of excitement
at possibilities of places to fly,
people to be,
buzzing through my shifting sense of self . . .
My daily window of belief —
How small it is!
How infinite the plane
in which my life can play!
©Wendy Mulhern
January 14, 2014
To Edward
Come here again
and enter
this inner pool of me,
which, when you touch,
comes real
and I can go there, too —
Quench myself deeply,
Immerse myself
in what will glow afterwards
on my whole skin
and in the deep breaths I take,
an unnamed satisfaction
that fills up the entire void
amazingly —
that huge chasm
with one drop.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 12, 2013
No, please —
(as I see you from afar,
drifting down the currents
of someone’s strenuous persuasion)
Remember what you had —
Remember how we both
filled with that so-tangible light,
heart-homed, rising more massively
than magma,
shining through our eyes,
making that visiting booth a lantern
that poured its brightness into all my life.
I know I always went away euphoric,
my joy so well fed,
my faith so anchored
by your stand for truth.
How can you forget?
How can you leave that light
for cold logic, dry texts,
and an old excluding story?
Come back —
(I ask you, knowing
I have no traction
except the hope we planted together
which has spread into a great field
in the time you’ve been gone.)
©Wendy Mulhern
January 11, 2014
Twice today I finished typing
and hit the “send” button,
and noticed that my heart was sounding
that homing drum,
that turning thump
that signified
travel to altered states,
passage through some narrow place,
(speed-squeezed along the airfoil,
pulled through the lift
of the attenuated pressure)
the re-emerging into normal day
requiring decompression,
proof that I had touched the table
of some deep-lying truth.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 10, 2014