Light glimmers on green grass,
light like a laugh, light like
the swoop of flight
There is more here
than can be understood
in carbon cycles,
though that has its own beauty
This moment of uplift,
this mingling of sight and joy,
this delight of sharing essence
with another life form
is what will shine us
ever more clearly
in the eternity
which we know as home.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2023
I suddenly saw
the events in our lives
like the curve of the smoke of a candle –
no need to remember exactly,
no need to pin down its shape
For we have been here forever –
before the mountains, before the earth,
and if we’ve ever known each other,
it follows that we always have,
and always will,
in the timeless mindfulness of being
This is the only field vast enough
to hold my love for you who I called daughter,
and you who I’ve called Mom –
think of us all together in boundlessness –
what laughter! and what power!
©Wendy Mulhern
March 29, 2023
I will not give up, because,
in the matter of allegiance,
I give myself to one thing or another,
and giving up means giving in
to that which doesn’t care a whit
for me, or who or what I am
I will not give up.
Either my daily service
is to life, and joy, and all I love,
or I’ve bowed down to the enslaver,
the thrice removed from mindfulness
insertion of a clause designed
to hide what’s true and right
about my being
That argument
is as old as time,
but my being is eternal.It was here before,
and it will be here far beyond
the scope of self-important petty rules
Under whatever guise,
whatever seeks to hide
the brightness my desire shows me to be,
however boastful are its claims
or how official sound its names,
it has no foothold for constraining me.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 16, 2021
As if coming, after a long hike,
to the banks of a strong river,
as if taking off my shoes,
as if feeling the rapid daunting coolness,
and considering immersion
So I come
to the certainty of knowing
that all my temporality
must be turned in, given up,
exchanged for the existence
that precedes and follows time,
a state of being
too large and bright to be confined
in narrow, time dimensioned channels
I start to see the things I must give up –
some dear, some foolish –
and I feel,
if not now, soon,
I will be ready.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 2, 2021
It’s not too late to turn around –
the voice that says you’ve come too far
along this path, you’ve made your choice,
there is no turning back –
that voice is not your own,
and it’s not true
It’s not too late to change your mind,
change it completely, change the way it thinks –
you are not bound to have the same reactions,
however many times
you have before
It’s not too late,
for you are just beginning, really.
We all are very young, very new
at this art of being –
we have eternity in which to learn.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 22, 2020
We live in the eternal now
and nothing else can touch us –
no troubled echoes from the past,
no fears of future outcomes
Here in the eternal now
we are fresh each moment,
and all the resources of now
are present for our use
In the eternal now,
there can be no sore spot,
no place rubbed raw, no pain
from previous exertion
No troubled memories,
no shell-shocked caution,
nothing cordoned off as minefield.
So we can thrive, forever safe
in the eternal now.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 31, 2020
In the soft damp morning I consider
(while turkeys bathe in dirt, and baby swallows
chitter when their parents swoop in)
how our whole life is just a shimmer,
just a snuggle, along the course of time
It has its arc, it has
what feel to us like struggles,
what seem to us like dramas,
complicated and drawn out
But they are just a trill, a flash,
something that comes round again,
resolves itself into the tone
of our sweet, precious essence,
triumph of a chord well played,
taste of iridescent light,
filigree of love within the song of Life.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 30, 2020
Because you came to me
in a dream, you have me asking,
What of you do I know?
And what do I know of anyone?
This dream appearance –
the way you laughed, subtle
irony in your observations –
where does it reside
that I should know it –
Where are you now?
And what does where mean, anyway,
in the everywhere of thought,
the every here of presence?
What will our knowing be,
when freed of time and space?
For this my daily practice strives
to find, each day, a little taste.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 24, 2020
Hold your body to the flame —
you will phoenix-rise again,
this is nothing you can name —
these are your essences made plain
The burning bush is not consumed,
the burning life is fueled by learning,
steady down the steps of days
to your eternity returning
Set your sight on what you are,
glimpsed beneath your deepest hope —
the guiding lights you see afar
are nearer than you’re told
Hold your body to the flame
of all that lights and fuels your being —
this will now define your days,
becoming all you’re seeing.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 14, 2019
I’m imagining us, not too long hence,
walking hand in hand
though in the vision
it’s more like streaming light,
all of us grateful
to have been brought together
I imagine us streaming like that
all the time — then I consider
you will have others, too,
others to share and celebrate
and so will we
and the whole thing
will be so much grander
than I can think up
So I’ll just bask in the warmth of it,
how it comforts me and holds me up
right here and now.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 10, 2019