On some days
I let the soft rain
give me permission to be soft,
while the landscape fills in
with soft green,
and I do very little,
while the rivers move
under the whole ground,
pulling all water
to them and down
The soft clouds reprise their motion,
wind running through them,
their goal as drifty as my own.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 4, 2023
Take me, take me along
this singing rumbling tumbling flow,
and though we speak of gravity,
and though I feel it,
throughout this run
there is no foreign force exerted
All is mindful here,
from molecule to glint of light,
to leaves submerged and floating,
to swirling and cavorting waves
and branches leaning, catching
All is mindful here
and each contributes
what defines itself
and how it fills the whole.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 27, 2023
Who wouldn’t give up being a drop
to be a river? It’s not as if your essence changes –
it’s just that the illusion of isolation
is swept away, in the thunder of the power
It’s not as if the forces you run with,
the gravity, evaporation,
are different, though in the multitude
of your collective run,
you may feel more of what they do
And nothing stops you
from leaping up anyway, being
a sparkling drop, dissipating into mist,
drifting far into the forest
to commune with trees
Just that you always feel
the pull home, and the desire to mingle,
and your belonging
in all the secret passageways,
above ground and under –
everywhere the river calls its own.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 20, 2022
Words may slow down
but the flow of meaning
glides on immensely,
sparkles appearing like bright insights,
its volume, its movement, entrancing,
and challenging to comprehend
Where it all comes from
and where it goes
may require a rethink
of what things are made of,
may introduce a deepening
from mystery to wonder.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 28, 2022
Dust can’t array itself
against a river
No amount of intricate
setting of snares
to catch and defraud,
to frame and denature
and marginalize
have any power
to halt or turn or block
in any way
the quick and vital current
of your being
Dust finally
has nothing to say at all.
The river of you runs clear
and wild and full,
loving every bank and turn and fall,
singing of its cause, its source,
its all.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 4, 2021
I’m still thinking of that spring
whose source is deep within you –
how it orients you
even if you hardly sense it there
And I’m thinking of the welling up,
the rising that no spring resists
that pushes what would block it
clean away
There is a river,
yes, there is a river,
there is peace like a river
surging forward without end
And yes, it calls you,
it calls your spring forth –
you have flowed into it
before you knew you would.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 26, 2020
We have moved from the place
of hopeful milling about,
of waiting liquid at the lip
of some great movement
(the general goodwill of our presence
bright enough to make us feel at one)
Almost unthinking, we have plunged
along the run life set for us —
maybe we thought it was a choice,
perhaps we only noticed
by the coursing of our fluids,
by the pounding force
of that which bore us,
that, indeed, we’ve moved along
And that the quiet pool
in which we hoped and waited
(and chafed at our incompetence
to stir it up)
will not be seeing us again
for a long time
Who knows where all the others are
and where their rapids bear them
and if we’ll meet again,
changed and unchanged
at the waiting sea?
©Wendy Mulhern
January 1, 2018