Tag Archives: life

Desire

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In your time
you will find
the sweet imperative,
the nectar you must drink —
the one, right now
that shoots through you like light,
that holds you up
as water holds up herbs
and makes you grow,
ever more unfolding into what you are.

And when it’s done
there’ll be a new imperative —
It will taste different
(the old one will no longer do)
and you will know it from your craving
and how your thirst rises up to meet it
and to crest in satisfaction
as you’re nourished.

This is how we know our way —
we are designed
to want what we most need.
It is the way of everything that lives
and it has worked
for more years than our counting minds can fathom.

Trust your truth!
It will grow ever clearer
as you lean into
the wind of your desire.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 23, 2013


Release

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I release you
to the greater parent,
the source of your I Am,
the equilibrium that guides you
from the center of the earth,
the inner light that grounds you to the stars.
What you are has always been
so much greater
than any sense of you I tried to manage.

I release me
to the greater parent,
who will not hold me to my failings
but ever lifts me up
with awe inspiring joy —
tosses me, laughing, towards the sky,
catches me, surely,
in arms that know me as their very own —
sends me out on splendid paths to roam,
brings me to an ever wider home.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 18, 2013


Other Plans

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The world, as it turns out,
is not constructed with words,
not made of plans and cardboard resolutions,
Does not need to be specified,
evaluated, modified,
Nor do you need to make yourself fit in it.

The world has its own logic:
Cleave to it!
It will take you through soft, cool hollows
and up and down along the curving ground,
Sunlight will strike you,
and shifting shade,
and you’ll be enchanted.
You’ll find your hunger sweet
and its fulfillment
more delicious than you ever could prescribe.
You’ll find everything you need,
even the meeting of your need to give.

It isn’t, as it turns out,
something you needed to design
or could have forced to come out differently.
Live in it!
It will take you in its arms
and you’ll be glad,
for it was made with you in mind.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 6, 2013


Wilderness

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Walking here
I have to admit
I don’t know anything —
Nothing I could package
and deliver as a
Thing That I Have Learned.
I have no map for myself —
No one’s words hover at my shoulder,
especially not my own —
no conclusion I can make,
no lesson I can take from here on forward.
In what way can I say I know anything,
of life, of love, of death?

Yet when I close my eyes
and follow my breath
into the undergrowth of dream,
I feel like a wilderness
and it feels good.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 30, 2013


Living at the cambium

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I start to understand
living at the cambium —
that thin and vibrant layer
between structure and protection
where everything is new-born
and anything can change

I may have viewed my life
projected over time
as some determined specimen
which could be judged and graded
and would end

But here in this experience
of ever-new creation
in the eager greening 
before the form —
this place of generation
which pushes out the growing tips
and thrives,

There is no noun of me,
no stepping back for an assessment,
no self-image, nothing to defend,
just this new greenness,
this reverberating verb, 
the forming of a now that never ends.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 25, 2013


Guarantees

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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


No Regrets

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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

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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

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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

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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