To weather these times,
we ride on what we know will fly –
music, or touch, or high fantasy –
we find what takes us high
to keep our heads above the rising mire
Whether these times
encompass the swift end of all we knew,
or herald the bright dawn
of what we know must come,
we’ll need the touchstones
of everything we love
to bear us through them,
to bring us home.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 31, 2023
Sometimes I feel myself swimming,
as structures dissolve around me –
all the things that people try to count on,
all the reasons people give for living
There still seems to be a grand march
of purpose – many marches –
stridently in conflict,
but my sense of what is real
sinks right through them –
I can’t align myself to their directions
Sometimes I feel new life forming –
seeds amidst the liquid,
reaching out to web together,
understanding substance in a way
we haven’t done before,
giving me a place to plant my hope.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 26, 2022
Things go through changes –
clouds turning in on each other
drifting beyond the wires,
moon in its cycles,
changing its timing and size
Some processes are light
and some are forceful –
wind and gravity,
flood and fire
And in their crucible,
that which never changes
emerges pure,
again and again remembered,
transfigured, rendered …
It is the same with us,
these days, these seasons,
as we sweep through these great flows
and reemerge.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 12, 2022
It only takes one day
for us to start believing
in summer’s end –
some clouds and wind,
the possibility of night rain –
and we notice
a different tone across the fields –
though they are parched and seem set
for unremitting dryness,
a siege span they must cross
before the rains come,
some of the yellow is also
leaves starting to turn
here and there,
leaves falling and drifting in the wind,
getting ready
We are not ready,
but that has never
made any difference.
We will be there with it
when it comes.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 21, 2020
I take this ride
fueled by spring —
by blossom scent and balmy air
I hit against the memories
along the road — some time it’s been
since last I traveled here
I’m brought up short
by change — holes in the tree scape,
boxy buildings where they were —
Surprised again by how a gap
can suddenly unhook the tendrils of a place
and make it mine no more.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 2, 2019
I have not changed
but I have cycled round again
like tree rings, layer on layer of growth,
branching upon branching
I have not changed
but I have pulled the veil away
layer by layer,
coming towards a clearer focus
All this time I thought that I was changing
but that was part of me —
the ever hopeful slant,
the sense of progress
which has come with me
like my hands, my eyebrows
And I will not change
until the final veil’s lifting
shows what I have always been,
changing me all the way back
through my past, and showing how
I have never changed.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 12, 2018
We have moved from the place
of hopeful milling about,
of waiting liquid at the lip
of some great movement
(the general goodwill of our presence
bright enough to make us feel at one)
Almost unthinking, we have plunged
along the run life set for us —
maybe we thought it was a choice,
perhaps we only noticed
by the coursing of our fluids,
by the pounding force
of that which bore us,
that, indeed, we’ve moved along
And that the quiet pool
in which we hoped and waited
(and chafed at our incompetence
to stir it up)
will not be seeing us again
for a long time
Who knows where all the others are
and where their rapids bear them
and if we’ll meet again,
changed and unchanged
at the waiting sea?
©Wendy Mulhern
January 1, 2018
You are not asked
to be more than what you are
but you are asked
to understand yourself
You are not asked
to make yourself be anything
but you are asked
to know your maker
This quiet standing
through what might feel like changes
will deliver you, after a while
to where the you you wished to be
is really who you have been all along
This kind of changing
where you could say
you actually did nothing
is what will save you,
this kind of changing
will win your day.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 3, 2017
Mat of roots at water’s edge,
persistent wind blowing
damp and gray,
steely sparkles from sun
mostly obscured by clouds,
hope seeping up into the day
We’ll take this time of change,
we’ll sink our teeth into it —
no point in trying to hide from it,
no point in getting lost
in the drift
We can have guidance,
we can be lifted —
this doesn’t have to be
all about falling.
There can be health.
There can be
finding the way.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 10, 2017
Be forewarned —
the work will change you,
you will not keep the quick
conclusions, the know-it-all opinions,
the glib solutions
that brought you, eager, to the job
You will use your mind
but not in the way you imagined —
there will be great gaps
in what you understand,
you will have to start from nothing,
again and again
Patience will be your best tool,
patience and perseverance
and enough inner silence
to hear what the task suggests
Your body will learn to keep going —
give it permission to work hard
and a way to get warm at day’s end,
it will rise to the occasion,
and serve you well
and be your friend.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 22, 2017