This kind of silence

Silence is allowed  –
it is the bed that all sound falls to –
stream bed, dream bed,
forest seep, leaf sleep

Silence lets things spread and sink,
sift and thin, ever in

It sounds like time,
and everything that can be lost and found,
it sounds like possibility,
it is the backdrop
for the first emergence
of what will grow,
the last breath
of what has gone to rest

This kind of silence
gives birth to music,
and remains its fast companion,
its dearest friend.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 15, 2023

Underlying light

I consider the brightness
that makes all this possible  –
presence of substance,
primal truth of everything,
molten beneath a very thin crust,
goodness in essence, ready to break through

Look – see how it’s done so
here in these evening moments
where we laughed, and made music,
joined rhythms together,
rode on one sound we collectively made,
celebrated the light

And behind it, the brightness
that makes it all possible,
present and primal,
truth of our substance,
bearing us through our days,
authoring all our ways,
cause of our being
our love and delight.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 24, 2022

Music

Every tone that waits to chime
in the hollow of its time,
the perfect silence, opening
to give it space, to let it ring

Every voice that waits to sing
into the perfect listening,
the heart that hears, and tucks the song
where it can echo, sweet and long

All sounds, received, so find their rest,
a still point of their own,
the consummation of their quest,
the hum in which they’re known.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 21, 2022

Songs

I go through the day
attended by many songs.
Today I have chosen
ones that remind me
of what I am learning to hold as true

The less mindful ones,
the ones invited by daily sounds,
and those embedded deep in memory,
come around, too

It’s good to remember I have a choice,
if not for silence, then at least
for songs whose music and enlightened thought
can take me someplace  new.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 9, 2022

Night Music

The rain rolls its music
down the gutters, into the tank
where round echoes replay
the rhythms of trickling,
the pause and rush
that give a cadence like words –
you could easily think
someone was speaking
just beyond the range of intelligible.
Frogs add counterpoint.
For all this,
I am glad.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 2, 2022

One bright moment

The sunlight glided beautiful
into the afternoon
which before was cloudy,
and it may have been my music
that made the cows come running  –
in any case, I was delighted to be there,
the tones of my recorder clear
if sometimes hesitant
(me mostly avoiding forgotten high notes)

The deer also took notice,
though they swung a wide arc
around my sound,.heading in a line
farther up the field

And I thought the bluebirds noticed, too,
though maybe we were all doing
our own celebration
of one bright moment
in this October day.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 10, 2021

Ye shall have a song

“Ye shall have a song, as in the night when a holy solemnity is kept”

The song rings through me in the night,
it carries me, tunes me,
holds my harmonics pure

I will be holy,
I will chime through the darkness,
I will find the clarity of inner light,
my footsteps, though unseen, will still be sure
I will keep it, this great solemnity,
for it engenders gladness to the core.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 16, 2020

Art Appreciation

And if I can’t play the music
that drenches me
with the presence of beauty,
that flows down my arms
and fills my mouth
and ripples me with shimmers
from the sun

Perhaps this standing in it
is still worth something —
perhaps this gratitude
for its existence,
this rising joy, all-in reverberation
still serves a function —
gives the music someone who believes.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 1, 2020

My ipod serves up love songs on the plane

I listen and my empathy
follows the threads of passion
(threads like water veins
upon the land below,
the rivers, lakes, the melting snow,
the cities clustered there, along the roads)

I feel the longing and the pain,
I feel the exaltation —
my spirit hums an all-embracing chord
that circles round the threads
and drops beneath,
enfolding them in overarching blue.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 24, 2019