The washing machine
knows better than you
how much soap to dispense
and what heat and soap and time it takes
to wash your jeans
Why should you bother
to learn these things
when the washing machine
can do it for you?
Of course its little
electronic brain
can also fry,
which is why we recommend
the extended five year warranty,
because you can’t be expected
to fix these things yourself.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 25, 2020
I haven’t yet lived in a house
that birds want to fly into –
this one, being unfinished,
seems to offer enticements,
all these rafters, all these open spaces,
and the wind that makes itself at home here
These structures we make for ourselves
are not unnoticed by others –
they move in, they make a place for themselves,
as has always been intended
through all the time of living –
we make room for each other,
we share the land.
I’m striving now to learn to use the voice
that says, you don’t need anything –
don’t need to change,
don’t need to have been born
with a different set of genes,
or different circumstances,
you don’t need to earn anything,
you don’t need to be punished.
What you are is just exactly
what you need to be –
I’m striving to find the voice
that knows this clear enough
that when I tell someone this truth
they will believe.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 23, 2020
The gateways to where you want to be
are everywhere. You can find them
in anything that reflects light, in everything
that holds a shadow
You can feel it in the yielding,
the soft give of grace, the melting
of preconceptions into something more liquid,
more bracing
The widening of what you know
of yourself and the world,
that stretches you till you rebound,
perception soaring
to where you see with new and tender eyes,
all things now pure, unburdened from disguise.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 22, 2020
My boots fill up with daisies
as I walk the fields, tending trees,
my hands pick up the smell
of dock and tansy from my weeding,
they don’t look very clean as I offer
handfuls of blueberries I picked
I reflect that, growing up in suburbia,
I never touched the dirtiness required
to tend the whole circle of life.
Now I am learning more
about being of the earth.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 20, 2020
June suddenly starts steaming on towards solstice,
rain remembered only in the reaching roots
of grass seeds sprouting,
and the moisture in the air
that calls all plants to rise
Summer visits us in moments ripe with memory,
the feeling of the air, the taste of ice cream,
the sprint of possibilities,
the wide expanse of days,
our call to be here in witness,
to ride its spirit like breath,
to move like wind through trees.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 19, 2020
I roused myself from the half dream gibberish,
out of the hammock before I knew I was awake,
hammock put away before I had decided
that I was done resting
As I was just lying down,
I had been thinking,
What would it mean to live every moment
as if I might wake up at any time?
As if the whole dream could fall away
just like that –
What would I want to be noticing?
©Wendy Mulhern
June 18, 2020
However many places
I have been right,
however many operations
I’ve worked correctly,
one thing that I don’t get
will foil the whole result,
and for all my careful efforts
I’ll have nothing
If, then, just now,
I find an error –
could be one of many
or the only one –
Shall I not say, Rejoice with me!
I’ve found my lost sheep
and am carrying it home.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 16, 2020
The world convulses.
This isn’t the first time a great idea
has lit up the people,
isn’t the first time a simple truth
has sat with dawn-fresh clarity
in people’s minds
That which for centuries
has called itself power
will plan, as ever, to sweep it away
with no thought at all
that there’s any spark
its bluster and trickery
can’t blow out
I will wait quiet.
I will hold this coal,
fuel it with my heart,
I will cherish the thought
that truth must win.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 15, 2020
I can smile
at the little ways you find
to be yourself, to make yourself a place
These things don’t need
to be judged or graded,
don’t need to be negotiated
You have always wanted
someone to love you just the way you are –
I can be that person – why not?
©Wendy Mulhern
June 14, 2020