A peaceful evening,
and strains of immortality,
in song and image,
gather round me
Much there is to reconsider –
all the nets I used to try to weave,
fall apart, unable to enclose
the substance I am finding here
So I proceed in hushed stillness,
keep letting fall my former definitions,
endeavor to embody this new knowing
that shows us infinite, at one, and free.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 5, 2023
In these early morning times, I feel
immortality hover about the house,
nestle in close with its abiding peace,
and I draw nearer to it,
finding comfort, finding warmth,
not even dwelling on a picture
of storms ahead – knowing my course is here,
step by step onward
into the beckoning arch.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 6, 2023
Mortality rattles along
like an old cart.
Wheels may fall off,
or a side, or the bottom
may fall through
And we are asked to think about
where we will take it
before it fails utterly –
if we will trundle on rough roads,
or seek out asphalt, or park ourselves
in some garage
But there are no choices here.
It’s all the same. Mortality lacks
the spirit of what we are,
so it can never satisfy
or even be relevant
Day by day I turn away
from these questions.
Day by day I walk my feet
in steps of freedom.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 21, 2023
Although the tales seemed so important,
perhaps they weren’t –
perhaps all of us let pass
so many potential rides
to where we thought we’d go
But we’re here anyway,
however much the same or different it is
from what we thought
And what I now know is,
I can’t default to death –
it never was a train that I could board
However long it takes,
I’m bound for immortality
in my return to knowledge
of who I am.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 27, 2023
If I die, I will die of mortality –
there is no other cause of death.
Other things people might call it
are so many irrelevancies –
whether I die of grief or mistrust or fear,
or of the planet’s burgeoning despair,
or of somebody’s anger, or someone else’s greed,
or of toxicity of any sort, bleeding
through the boundaries of being
All these so-called causes are just distractions,
for without mortality, I will not die.
Well then, let me consider
exactly what I am. Let me consider it
every hour. What are the colors and the flavors
of immortal moments?
What is my practice of living them?
It’s not about not wanting to die,
but of yearning to finally really live.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 3, 2022
I will not entertain
plans to bump down
an unforeseen hill, to land
in whatever lump the landscape leaves me
Lots of stories say we’re born to die,
but I don’t know if anyone
really believes that
It may tug and tag along,
an unacknowledged fear,
it may get an honored place
in one’s belief system
Bit I will not let go
of the darting silver sense
of living in a deeper liberty,
and every day I live,
I’ll strive to rise
to where we know
we’re never born
and never die.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 18, 2022
In the adventure of immortality,
I leave behind the currency
in which I used to deal
Instead of tokens,
the true object of desire,
instead of rules for the exchange,
a clarifying harmony
Yes, it impels me to be still,
for how, otherwise, would I take in
this light? – that settles
everywhere around me
How else would I follow
the infinite dendritic reach?
– always inward, always where it nourishes
the deepest recognition of identity,
and cherishes
every thought its touch impels to rise.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 8, 2021
The only place we’ve ever lived
is in the place where we can never die.
This isn’t what it looks like,
these days, these goals —
whatever I have thought of them before —
these changes . . .
Now I’ll keep paying attention
to what lights us up
deep down at the source,
what makes us live and move
before we even enter all the surface fray
This isn’t what it looks like
but it is something. Indeed,
it overrides whatever I had thought —
these changes, this which never changes.
This which I may find to be enough.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 1, 2018
We are left no choice
but immortality. The time has come
to step into our true nature,
or rather, to stand clear in it
while the winds of these times
blow our illusions away
All the things we thought we were
are now so imperiled, so compromised,
that there’s no point in parsing out
the things that have gone wrong
But what we’ve always known inside
about our worth
gleams forth as miracle
right where we were thinking all was lost
and we will rally
around that bright truth
and it will save us
in more forevers than we need to count.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 9, 2016
There is no element of self destruction
in my being.
There is no fatalistic caving in
to something happening to me.
Nothing can “happen to me”,
for I am entirely the product
of my own thoughts
I don’t come to my being
like coming upon a house
and finding rooms and furniture inside.
These feelings, postures, habits,
were not set up by someone else,
are not dependent on some outside source
This is my house, and everything here
is my choice. And I can give it all
the tenderest of care. I can untangle it
and let it all come clear
What I fathom of my source
provides my model.
What it shows me of my essence
syncs me up with elemental joy
There is no self destruction
in my being,
for what creates me
clearly means for me to live.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 9, 2016