Tag Archives: love

Surveying

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You can’t map this perfection
on anything less than infinity
No fairy tales —
happy ending or not —
can chart this vast terrain of love
No dreams, no plans
can catch or name it
Yet here it is

You can’t carve out for yourself
a portion you can take away
to eat alone, in some unnoticed corner
You can’t encapsulate it
in rules of thumb and formulas
for easy future access

Each time you love
you fling yourself
into the wide, unmappable
and ever perfect whole
of fully being
Your learning: not to make it better next time
but just about
the wonder of the now
Now that encompasses 
all of eternity —
Everything Life can endow.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 19, 2012



How could I not?

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Considering what it is to love,
Why would I not?
How, among these people
could there be any reason —
Any reason not to love them?

Would I 
not love them 
because of their pain?
would I 
not love them 
because of their wounds,
and how they carry themselves
shielding what is vulnerable?
would I 
not love them
because of the way they’ve found
to move in the world —
what they use to feed their hopes,
and their patched-together life-rafts of the things
that let them know that they are worthy?
Or how they talk, or how they look, or how they smell?

No.  There is no reason not to love them
No reason not to throw the cloak of caring
over their shoulders
and wrap them in the fabric of my presence 
and be there for them.  Whenever.

Considering what it is to love,
How could I not?
For to love is what defines us
and love is what we are.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 13, 2012



Two for Foret

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(Our friend Foret passed on yesterday evening.  This evening I took a bike ride, thinking of him, and these are the images that came forth.)

Life Affirms Itself

Life affirms itself
in brilliant blue of sky
and clouds laid out
in languid abandon
of wisps and splotches
brightness of the late sun 
softening the evening

It is a time for wistful thoughts of angels
and imagining us all gathering
free, now, from all our limitations —
all the times we felt we couldn’t share —
When we can recognize each other by the essence
that before we only saw in flashes
but which, in each of us, now shines clear 

Life affirms itself
in this and every yearning
and in each instinctive turning
to our Love.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 10, 2012














For Foret: A Tribute

Rainier-sized force of gravity
on the dance floor
Packing massive passion
Centrifugal powerhouse
Roiling currents with your playful storms
Humble and hoping
Romantic troubadour
Proffering sweet flowers plucked from air
Barefoot on your minstrel cycle
Seeking out harmonics, blending song
Forging from outlandish parts and phrases
A role you owned, a place where you belonged
I offer you this evening sky, this mountain
And through awakened feet, this farewell kiss
My feet to earth, and earth to you, Foret,
May you walk on in peace, inhabit bliss.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 10, 2012



The ones I want

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These are people who I want to be with
How do I decide that?
What are the components
of the equation
that make me look upon our gathering
with eager openness, anticipation?

These are people I want to be with
Can I say it to myself about anyone?
Can I just choose to so regard them
and then feel that glow?
— I don’t know.

This is how I am drawn:
When I think of them, I light up inside
As I approach them, coming from a distance
New layers of aliveness
keep waking up
As I get closer
I start running

What qualifies them so?
I didn’t make a judgement
Didn’t pass them through a screen
Conducted no tests
I don’t know exactly why my heart
just said yes

These are people I want to be with
I didn’t engineer it so
It isn’t something I deduced from calculations
I just know.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 8, 2012



Howling

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Go ahead
Stomp if you need to
Raise your fist at the sky
and scream
Swear, howl, wail
Your thoughts aren’t holding up the world
Your actions, however desperate
can’t damn you
The Love that holds you
is well able to sustain the world
and you
through this storm
whether it’s your storm
or all the world kicked up around you
whether you feel you have been bad
or feel you have been wronged
It doesn’t matter
You can rest
The Principle that turns the worlds
will keep on turning
Your drooping hopes will raise their heads
towards morning.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 18, 2012



Approaching You

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The way to your open heart
and the way to mine
may be the same:
When I care more
than any calculated consequence
And I listen
not to words 
but to the cry beneath them
And I hear
not what I’ve thought before 
but that which calls right now
And I ask myself:
What does it feel like behind those eyes?
I may approach you
And if I see 
that flicker of a kindled hope
And if I feel
its resonance within
And if I shine
that flicker back in affirmation
I may arrive.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 17, 2012



Elementary

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Love is easy

All you need to do is hold on
as to five hundred helium balloons
You’ll fly alright
Just don’t let go
for anything

Love is simple
One action only is required
Take hold, decide to do it
No more decisions need be made
You’ll be all right
It’s your toccata waiting to be played

Love is safe
The law of Love releases every fear
For though you fly
you never fly in peril
You can’t fall out of love
for Love is always here.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 6, 2012




picture: Jennifer McCurdy Golden Water Photo by Julius Friedman

Reconciliation

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Consider reconciliation:
It seems a miracle
to have a change so radical
not just the filling of a black hole
but actual radiance
a star that burns 
with joy as precious treasure
in the place of former pain

This shows the fact that love
though misdirected, sent out
clothed with barbs that tear —
expectations, disappointment
exercise of will, manipulation —
in the end, will do no harm
for in the time of reconciliation
all the hurt dissolves
and what is left is love

This at least is what I hope
in light of all the harm I may have done
I hope my love will still remain
and all the hurt be gone.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 1, 2012


All I have

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All I have
to give this love with
are my hands
my hands and my spirit
and my strong desire
How could I have thought
to leave them out
to give love telekinetically?
How was I not taught
to use everything I have
all of my consciousness
including my body
to tune and give this love?
Generations of us
grew up lost
but here it is:
my hands, my arms, my heart —
all I have —
Now I am learning to use, 
to give and receive this love,
all that I have
all that I am.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 26, 2012



Love’s Quest (graphically speaking)

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Funny the asymptotic arc
of what we call love’s quest
In one quadrant
(the one that’s called the quest for love)
We find the emptiness that never is fulfilled
the need that cries and cries
and so attracts
only more emptiness
a howling fall
that moans and moans
up an endless shaft
and even when it tries to rise
it never meets its goal

In another quadrant
(the one that’s called the quest of love)
We find the fullness that can never be suppressed
extending gracefully and effortless
an energy that never is depressed
a presence that can never be alone
since everywhere it looks
it finds its own.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 24, 2012