Turn Away

Turn away —
Do you have to see each hook,
each place along the ladder
where each of us has been
so deftly tethered?

(Most of us don’t even try
to find release,
deeming the resulting fall
too perilous a risk)

Turn away,
for you don’t need to fight the structure,
You only need to cease to give it life.
Turn away
by turning towards your truth, your love,
Walk there
and all the hooks will fade.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 24, 2013


Guarantees

Though you can’t bet
on this or that falling ball —
where it will land in the bell curve,
and you can’t count
on this or that seed —
if it will grow, if it will bear,
You can still count
on the filling in
of every niche
till every need is met.

It is the law of water,
it is the law of love
that in the snowmelt,
though some places
thaw more slowly,
every channel will deliver
down the mountain,
with mounting joy,
the full reward
for winter’s meditations.

It is the law of truth
that with abundant acts of life,
some will sprout,
enough will bear,
and you will be sustained.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 23, 2013


Your mind is fine

I invite you to consider:
If you ever felt stupid
because of something
you couldn’t grasp,
however often people hashed 
through explanations,
Perhaps you couldn’t get it
just because it made no sense,
and where you stood,
you couldn’t see 
the flattening
that lent a sense 
of contiguity,
or how others could think
that it was clear . . .

And even if
no words arose within
to clarify your reason for confusion,
it still revealed perception
of something left unheeded,
a missing piece of something
maybe you could sense was needed.
Your mind is fine
and it will guide you,
if you give it rein,
into your truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 22, 2013


No Regrets

No regrets
for life falls like water
down its course —
The same law always pulls us,
The same law always rights us —
What we choose in any instant
is the product
of precisely where we were,
and from precisely where we are
we always choose
what seems essential

No regrets
in the wild space of now,
suspended in air,
in vapor or in free fall,
in current or in back flow,
or sucked up in the taproot of a plant,
We still are held
in Life’s law,
and Life will always see us through.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 21, 2013


This is real

We will seek the place
where our hands can tell us:
This is real —
This is the deep soil
that clings in fingerprints,
that insists on connection;
This is the hidden liquid
that rises up through stems and leaves,
its constant, unseen circulation
the standing wave for all the green of life;
This is the spark —
electrical and necessary interchange
that makes us sure
we are alive and needed,
Where our hands and hearts can tell us:
This is real.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 20, 2013


The Tutelage of Life

The garden and I
start to blur our edges
as I lend it my substance
and it feeds me:
Weeds become harvest,
Crucial factors, before inscrutable,
become apparent

From humility
arises mastery,
From tending ground
arises groundedness,
From placing myself here
in the tutelage of life,
I find my native stride,
I find my place.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 19, 2013


The Law of Life

There is no wiggle
in the law that holds you,
no way to fall out of the cause
of your every movement,
no way not to be swept
in the wheeling intricacy
of the cosmic dance of all things.
No way not to act
according to your nature,
as simple as the goodness
of each intention,
as complex as
the allness of the law.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 17, 2013


Still Point

Seeking stillness,
seeking coolness,
you sink gratefully
into the center point
where everything expands
in endless depth,
patterns and colors
incidental to the clear focus
as the stillness opens on and on —
round sound welcomes you in,
with ample room for echoes.
There is as much time here
as it ever takes
to coalesce, to find home,
to be reborn.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 16, 2013


Good Times

We came riding down
chutes of laughter
like kids on a water slide —
great swoops of bright sound
cascading and splashing
and we felt renewed,
and we set each other off
again and again,
perhaps less for amusement
than for how it made us feel —
ready to scamper around
and up the ladder again.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 15, 2013


Hollows

Sound loves hollows —
deep bodies of cellos,
silver shafts of flutes,
wet echoes of tunnels
and the ever-longing span
between the heart and throat

In the roundness of the cavity —
concave convergence of the waves —
the sound can dance and dance 
and gather strength
till it emerges, pure and confident

Some hollows must remain unfilled,
must wait in ready emptiness
to send the sweet song 
down the cove of deep desire —
must welcome it in circled emptiness
a steady vigilance
that holds the still
that gathers joy.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 14, 2013