Saturday Afternoon, at the Laughing Ladies Cafe

In our quiet corner of the world

The snow comes down, the furnace clicks

The wheels of commerce hum and purr

Folks with laptops smile and think and type

Espresso maker whines and thrums

Across the world, a short mouse click away

The streets are full, in history’s heady making

The breathless edge of life sharpens the day

As destiny hangs low, ripe for the taking

We sip our mochas, read the news

Do homework, glance out at each other

Confront our daily challenges, pace through duties

Instruct our children, check in on our friends

Buy gasoline, keep warm, wait for spring

Across the world, powers make their play

Wills pull taut, old expectations breaking

How dare they ask? - How could they not?  Today

In rippled flows like childbirth, youth is waking.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 26, 2011

Seeking to be Under the Influence

“I hate poetry,” my son said to me today.  “Everyone does.” As usual I laughed about him being the knower of everyone.  But walking back from the library, four poetry books in my bag - four from four shelves worth, chosen almost randomly - I wondered about it.  I don’t know the land of poetry, or its history - its topography, geology, political lines.  I know a few poets I like, some I love.  I know I have been influenced by poets at different times in my life, where it feels like their music gets into my blood and makes my words sing like theirs.  But I don’t know how to find more like them.  I’m thinking I need to.

I wrote the following poem in 1976, after a magical walk on a magical beach in Wales.  In my efforts to capture the occasion and how it moved me, I felt influenced by the work of Dylan Thomas.  

Aberdaron

The night is silver and lace,

lace dragging mirrors

down to the sea

back to the black deep etched in foam

laced in swirling form

silver in its dance for the ruling moon.

Mirrors glint and recede -

the lace comes again to the shore

to cast them

and drag them slowly back as they

reflect the sky.

as sand reflects sky

the sky reflects sea

clouds reflect the foam

the depth of the sea reflects the moon.

The black islands say nothing, though the moon

is riding in a violet-blue carriage surrounded by rainbow

The dull, humble textured cliffs watch

while tousled clouds walk lofty

lost

in reverie

floating in a cave of wind.

Silent in the darkness

a stone

is smooth and black

with a white ring of lace around it.

©Wendy Mulhern
Late Fall, 1976

White Space

I didn’t listen to myself last night when I said, save one of those poems for tomorrow.  Ah, I thought, I’ll have something new for then.  I thought about the same things today - developments in the Middle East, what makes something poetry.  I worked on revising my novel.  I wondered about ways I might get the feedback I crave, the dialog I long for. I watched snow coming down.

I’m trying to post every day.  What does it matter if no one even looks?

(I left the space white overnight, but then crept in to add the following:)

No need to fight too hard 

against the white space

it’s not a tight space

it’s something unconfined

Consider it a wide place

a place where you might find grace

a landscape where you might trace

something divine

Try giving it a night chase

fast colors in a light race

you aren’t the only nut case

who’s so inclined

You might yet capture some trace

that maybe you can’t quite place

that leads you to your right place

your rescued mind.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 24, 2011

Politics and Poetry

Yesterday had strange lights in it.  I sat with a group of homeless women and wrote about peace, and heard poignant tales of trauma and redemption.  I read about Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain.  I finished a poem about a vision I saw, nearing sleep.  Today I read some poetry online (looking into taking a class, trying to find the right teacher) and found much that was foreign to me.  And I read about a group of young people from Serbia who are teaching people how to successfully bring down dictators.  http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/16/revolution_u?page=0,1

Which engendered the following:

Political Conversion:
     Ode to CANVAS

What wins? Can empires truly crumble?

Can decades of oppression be brought down?

Perhaps they can, with methods wise and humble

the youth from Serbia have worked to spread around.

They look around and find the power areas - 

the forces to win over to their side,

In Egypt’s case, police and military,

their land as one, a people unified.

They build for years, with quiet, small successes

They grow their movement almost secretly

till when they stand, their voice can’t be suppressed:

The people claim their courage and are free.

Such wonder! That these dedicated youth

Are proving to us all the power of truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 22, 2011

Poetical Confusion

Some call it poetry when words are snatched

from multi-tasked attention - meaning hatched

perhaps as afterthought, upon observing

juxtapositions of their random pennings.

It may be so for them, but as for me

I crave a higher sensibility

I want to be transported by a poem

made to see and feel in ways I haven’t 

beyond the market’s dull, bombarding drone

the drift of mindless clutter on the planet

I don’t believe we can’t discern what’s true

that anything that flits through thought will do.

The culture speeds at furious velocity

I still hold out for luminosity.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 22, 2011

Prelude to a Dream

- A quick entry before I go to bed - most house lights off, the last chore done, the heat turned down . . . 

Prelude to a Dream

Here is the color of the depth of Mind:

Not quite black - a greyish, bluish cast

The place each soul has always hoped to find

Everything said from here stands; its word will last

Mountains are moved, all rivers speak it

Northern lights’ swift shimmer shines it past

This is the place where nothing stands beneath it

No cave so deep, no shifting sea so vast

Here in the backdrop of the depth of Mind

All secrets are spelled out, their golden stamp

is illustrated, block by block, line by line

Impressed with every sacred word’s recap

Or so it seemed, as earnest dream descended

Submerging me in sleep before it ended.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 21, 2011

For Days When Progress Isn't Obvious

A pep talk for myself and maybe for others as well:

Ode to Patience

layer on layer, patient placing down

daily labor, each day’s small deposit

little gain as evening comes around

not much to see, but still continue placid

consider the perspective of a life

of sediment that settles under sea

of change that comes so slowly you don’t see it

as things evolve, emerging gradually.

At some time, you’ll look back, and then you’ll know

the progress that you made at your endeavor

as imperceptibly stalactites grow

stalagmites reach them, and they join together.

No need to judge or let your head hang heavy

Your work will bear its fruits when they are ready.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 18, 2010

Pause for Praise

This morning, when the sun was streaming in the south livingroom window, and the leaded glass on the door was laying crystalline pattens across the yellow walls, I found myself wanting to commune again with the poetry of Harvey Hix.

One poem in particular stood out.  I had the urge to put it up here and say, look, isn’t this amazing? - Just the way last night, when I came off the freeway into Lynnwood and saw the moon rising over trees, orange and looking too large to embrace in both my arms, I had to call my husband and say go outside, see if you can see the moon.

I imagined the different lines of the poem and what I would say about them.  I thought of the joy the poem as a whole still brings me.  I decided to try it.  Here’s the second part of the poem:

list your desires, I’ll assert your sorrows,

glossed by geese in whose v grief is given,

the marred, moored one-note chorale they compose,

those lost children named again and again,

by the unbreakable fractal code

ferns signal not to us or to each other

but to what means mushroom, what suggests shade

and spring, the abstract will that maths feathers,

that occasions the blue-shade-layered hills,

the dread red-shouldered hawk’s shagged, haggard head,

missing moss-loosened tiles in the tunnels,

wind-washed sand-white bark-bare branches long dead

the goose-shade of clouds any breath-blue calls

the luminous fate coding me, dust-red.

     H.L. Hix

     from Legible Heavens, c. 2008

My delight pushes me beyond the lameness of talking with other words about the perfect words.  First the meaning as a whole:  this poem speaks to me of the wonder of life and the fact that its wonder is often beyond our designs - that if we desire something of our own concocting it probably will be to our sorrow, since we are designed by what designs everything, not by ourselves, and we reflect the same beautiful, fractal code that we see in everything else.

Now to the sounds: when you say out loud, “the marred, moored, one-note chorale they compose” it sounds amazingly like geese calling from the sky - try it!  (The again and again in the next line does a similar thing) And “the dread red-shouldered hawk’s shagged, haggard head”  - it’s just fun to say.  And I love the way the sometimes use of half rhymes keeps the sonnet from becoming too sing-song, but then at times the full rhyme pulls the reader into the rhythm.  So in the first four lines he has sorrows coupled with compose, the difference of accent making the rhyme subtle, and also the same relationship between given and again.  In the next four lines he has the partial rhymes of code and shade, and other and feathers. Then in the last six lines he has one set come out in clear straight rhyme - head, dead, red, which gives the poem momentum, pulling it towards its conclusion. In between are partial rhymes - hills, tunnels, calls (whose vowels progress from higher to lower in articulation).  

I believe the dust-red in the last line is a reference to the Biblical Adam, as that is the meaning of the name.

The first part of the poem, which places the second part as the then portion of an if-then sequence, lends the whole poem a certain lightness of heart, though not of meaning.  You need to read the whole thing in context - the whole poem and the whole series.  You’ll find it in Legible Heavens, to which there’s a link to the right in my blog (sorry it’s hard to see - haven’t figured out how to change that yellow color.) But you can find it there.

Song Stories

Occasionally I will write a song that is a story - not about anything true but perhaps conveying something someone will recognize.  That is the case in the song Amber Lee.

This song was born on the night before Valentine’s Day several years ago, when I was sewing bead eyes on some little lizards I had made, from rainbow colored fleece, to be Valentine’s Day presents for my kids.  As it happened, the beads were amber.  So the line came up, with its tune: Amber Lee has amber eyes.  The rest of the words came, in bike rides over subsequent weeks, to fill in the tune.  No real person behind this - just a story that arose from lizard eyes:

Amber Lee 

has amber eyes

shining out like some bright prize

If you want to understand, you must

be wise

Amber Lee,

what satisfies you?

Amber Lee

has honey hair

shot with gold like some deep prayer

if you want to go within, you must

be there

Amber Lee, 

what makes you care?

Amber Lee

has limbs of fire

laced throughout with swift desire

all the worlds that bend to her

she could acquire

Amber Lee,

what takes you higher?





©Wendy Mulhern

Songs vs. Poems

For me the difference between a song and a poem is simple: a song comes with a melody, a poem doesn’t.  I’ve never written a poem and then set it to music.  I’ve started to put some of my songs here, without the tunes, which is a little like posting blind, as I always hear the music when I write or think them, and don’t know what they sound like without music.

The tunes haven’t gone far beyond my own head.  My brother Geoff took to singing one of my songs, so it has a music life.  My other songs remain trapped, due to my aborted music training, my lack of drive to pursue it, and my lack of courage to perform.  Plus if they were going to be performed, they’d probably have to be altered to fit the format of popular songs.

Sometimes songs don’t come whole, as did Vineyard Haven Kite Song.  Sometimes a first line, with its melody, calls for another.  In those cases I have enjoyed playing with the words, the rhymes.  In the following song, I enjoyed making not just end rhymes but internal rhymes, with some lines nearly completely rhyming with each other.  

That mid-college period of my life was a prolific time for songs - I don’t know why.  I shared some of them again with my brother Geoff recently, and he said they were probably not songs he would sing, as they bore that unmistakable stamp of college age sensitivities.  He may be right.  What do you think?

In the gentle wind a leaf flutters

And my stirring heart utters echoes

Murmurings of fear are forgotten

As the joyful rhythm beckons

Come, let us dance, oh let us sing, let us be merry

Some are set on chance but we on things less arbitrary

I could shout and still keep a secret

It would speak to him that would hear it

This I send my song out to seek for

Someone who has sung with its spirit

Let it be known - the word is clear, it has been spoken

What is coming must appear - its truth cannot be broken.

©Wendy Mulhern
Fall 1978

Valentine’s Day

On Monday I saw my mom off at the airport and took the train back into town.  I had two hours before my usual commitment, so I sat in a coffee shop at Westlake Center, and later up in the empty food court.  I had brought my usual early morning activities - prayer and devotional reading.  The overlapping of unaccustomed views with my work brought new colors and insights.  

Today I felt weary of iambic pentameter, so I allowed the images and thoughts to take their own form:

Valentine’s Day 2011

Rain speckled windows

Rain heckled walkers

Valentined workers

Magic smile’s warmth

Hot foamy latte

Baristas laughing

Businessmen talking

Measuring worth

Flash glimpse of something

Glancing up pensive

Fusions of insight

Inklings of truth

Something to hold on

Take when I go on

Pondering, breathing

Walking through rain

Later reflection

Precious connection

Light glimmers lifting me

Homeward again.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 16, 2011

Political Interlude

I remember being in high school and thinking that Anwar Sadat was a good man.  A man who was making peace in the world’s implacable places.  I remember thinking the same thing about Henry Kissinger.

I later heard that maybe Henry Kissinger didn’t have the good of the people in his sights in the way I had believed.  I heard that Hosni Mubarak, though harder for us to deal with, might better represent the will of the people than Anwar Sadat had.  I’ve come to think it’s very hard to know what’s true about what’s going on in the world.

The people in Egypt seem to be exhilarated by their successful uprising.  It’s hard to know how it all will come out.  When Gorbachev dismantled the Soviet Union, I thought it would be a good opportunity for democracy to take hold.  But instead of offering support in the building of democracy’s infrastructure, we offered hyperselfish capitalism - the worst possible influence of the west.  The rhetoric at the time was that we were being ambassadors for western freedoms.  What we sold, in a new package, was the same old freedom to exploit.  At least, that’s what it looked like to me.  What do I know?

The best I can do is hope that the time is really right for the freedoms the Egyptian people are tasting, and that we don’t somehow go barging in there to mess things up.

In Egypt they rejoice to see a change

Though what will come of it is far from clear

What power moves to fill the vacuum may

Be those who subjugated folks before

And yet the people say the fear has lifted

That now, no matter what, they know they’re free

They feel their noble hearts will work a shift

Towards openness and greater equity

Perhaps it’s in their power to redeem us

Wake us from our jaded cynicism

The waning comfort of complacent lives

Make us stand with them, now that they have risen

Truth over comfort could yet make its claim

We could learn courage once again from them.

     
    
©Wendy Mulhern
 February 12, 2011

The Concluding Chapter

On Saturday I finished a sonnet about Egypt, and I thought I might interrupt my tale of young adulthood on Martha’s Vineyard with a political interlude.  But it’s Valentine’s Day, and this song, in its way, is about love.  So I will continue as planned.

In the end of that summer the tensions were resolved for me.  I managed to step clear of the judgement that I was doing a bad job, managed to find joy in the good I did and a vicarious enjoyment of my brother’s budding friendships.  This final song brought me great comfort.

Many years later a mentor was helping me find my life direction.  He asked me to talk about times I remembered with a sense of accomplishment. One of the highly salient ones was the writing of this song, in three chapters.  He observed that this proved I was an artist - that of all the challenges that I may have overcome that summer, what I mentioned was this song.  It took me another twenty years to figure out that I’m a writer, and that I can’t just divert that calling to do something else that seems plausible.

The song is still clear in my mind.  It still pleases me to sing it.  I showed it to my brother once, and he was unimpressed.  When I shyly sang it to him, he said ah, I see how it works.  So I guess this one does better with the melody than without it.  I wish I could sing it to you.

Vineyard Haven Kite Song, Chapter Three

End of summer

Goldenrod afterglow

Now from somewhere

Things that you know come in clear again -

That life is love and laughter

In the end the things you’re after find you

All the dreams will reach their dreamers

You will too.

End of summer -

Knowing you have to go

End of summer

Thinking of times that you want to hold

But a golden haze enwraps them

And the summer days

Fuse into one,

A song, a ripple on the water

Waves and storms, and smiles for keeping warm

Tans will never last forever

Plans will change and who’ll remember?

-Someone will.

©Wendy Mulhern
August, 1978

Songs and Longing

Vineyard Haven Kite Song turned out to have three chapters.  I know it’s odd to refer to songs in terms of chapters, but I felt impelled to call them so at the time.  Each one came to me with melody and words together, and each one illustrated something of my passage through that difficult, though at times beautiful, summer.  

When composing it (if that can be the word for letting it come into my mind) I didn’t really notice the longing in it.  That was something my brother later pointed out.

Vineyard Haven Kite Song, Chapter Two

Afternoon off and I’m drifting on down

Wandering with the wind into the town

Stepping along, looking around

A little bit lost and a little bit free

Knowing there’s something here waiting to find me

I’m seeking, seeking something worth keeping

Not even speaking but silently hoping

Hoping, hoping too hard for coping

Choking on chances but with my eyes open

Open to see something strong and flamboyant

Something that’s vibrant, gentle and sweet.

Leaving, sighing - nothing worth buying

Still keep on wandering, trying to find it -

Something or someone to kindle my soul

That I might fly again

That we may know

That we together have somewhere to go, too

Someone and me

To set ourselves free

That we might reach the sky over the sea.

©Wendy Mulhern
August, 1978

Truth Conditions

I remember the phrase truth conditions from my study of linguistics at Penn, where we talked about how an utterance was true if all its truth conditions were met, both the asserted and the presupposed.  The truth conditions of “The king of France is bald” are  a) there is a king of France; and b) he is bald.  We talked about how negating the sentence doesn’t touch the presupposed truth condition: “The king of France is not bald” still implies that there is a king of France.

I found myself thinking of truth conditions in another context with regard to writing.  In order for a line to go into a poem, it must be true, and it must be what I want to say.  Those are its truth conditions.  Rhymes will eagerly suggest themselves even when they have nothing to do with truth.  It is my job to reject them, even in the most mundane of verses.  Last night I could truthfully write a line about leaving the dishwasher to its burbles.  But I couldn’t, even in a verse far from worthy of posting, write that I would go to bed and dream of gerbils.  Sorry.  Wasn’t going to happen. Didn’t meet truth conditions.

On the other hand, sometimes a song will come to me almost whole, mostly, as it seems to me, following the leadings of rhyme and meter, and afterwards suggest something to me that, though I hadn’t known I was thinking about it, seems to me in some sense true.  The summer after I took a year off of college, I returned to a job that was idyllic in many respects.  But some crucial supports were missing, so there were unexpected tensions.  One day I hitchhiked most of the way to work and walked the remaining several blocks, through the small town of Vineyard Haven.  I saw a kite in a store window, and by the time I got to work a song had formed in my mind, which I hastily wrote down.  The tune was cheerful; the song entertained me.  It was only later that I considered what truth conditions may have been met:

Vineyard Haven Kite Song, Chapter One

Icarus with burning wings

Spoke to the flying clouds as he fell:

How can you

Not doing

Anything

Catch the resplendent sun so well?

The water that caught him was sparkling blue

Like the sun and the sky that he thought he knew

But the sea was still and the sun was silent

Nothing to tell of a fall so violent

Save a few feathers and, up above,

A father that mourned for the sun he loved.

Daedalus, Daedalus, tell us please

What is the lesson you’d teach from this?

Is there a hope for arms such as these

To find the sky and the sun’s great bliss?

©Wendy Mulhern
August, 1978

Learning to run

It had long been a wish of mine to be able to run.  Wishes are different from aspirations, sometimes even antithetical to them.  I wished I could run fast as one of the wishes I might ask if a fairy granted me some (not among the first three, but if I took my sister’s suggestion that my first wish would be all the wishes I wanted for the rest of my life, then I’d wish for fast running among one of those wishes.)  As it was I was agonizingly slow as a child, last picked for sports teams.  I would always get a stitch when I tried to run, a pain that proved too hard for me to power through to any kind of competence.

Later analysis might point out (as my husband did) that my attempt to run was inefficient - that there was far too much verticality going on (what he said was my center of gravity was too high).  What I realized was that I was really trying to fly, trying to leap up with every step.  Which, as it turned out, worked against forward motion.

As an adult I’ve tried a few times to learn to run - a few days of searing, painful treks up to the school on the corner, once around the track and back; later inspiration from a book called Born to Run, which had us running barefoot around the track at Kellogg Middle School, until they closed it down to replace the track with a rougher surface, unfriendly to bare feet.  My most recent endeavor involves running on the treadmill at the Y.  Normally I have eschewed working out at a gym when actual outdoor exercise could do the same thing; my bicycle riding has always been as much for the air and the scenery as for the workout.  But in the winter, when cold air can be a challenge if I’m struggling anyway, I’m finding the tutelage of the treadmill salutary.  And it became the subject for my sonnet today:

Back from running treadmill at the Y

I’m salty, mellow, tired but elated

Five miles today, or almost, and I find

Enthusiasm high, not dissipated.

At night, in resolutions in my bed

I think of marathons, triathlons 

Imagine running miles along the road

A settled gait that takes me on and on

Come spring, when air outside is balmy, sweet

I hope to take off confidently striding

Just me, the road, the sneakers on my feet

Past sprouting blooms, suburban landscapes gliding

For now I’m flush with incremental gains

As treadmill numbers, climbing slow, make plain.

Having finished that, I had a little more to say on the subject, so I decided to try another verse, one whose rhythm might lend itself more to running:

The wave of my gait rolls up and across

Right to left, left to right, as I stride

One movement, connected, steady and strong

Makes me feel I could do this awhile

The treadmill, my training wheels, teaching me rhythm

Makes my steps even and steady

While the green blinking numbers encourage my continuing

Show what I’ve managed already

The music that privately plays in my ears

Makes me smile and augments my endurance

Gives enough difference that each step’s not tedious

Gives me the hint of a dance

I could get used to this - 

That is my hope

That I’ll learn to want more and more

So I’ll run in great freedom and reap from it joy

And it won’t even feel like a chore.

©Wendy Mulhern
Feb 6, 2011

What makes something poetry instead of mere verse?  I feel it has to transcend mundane views, invoke a deeper world.  These don’t.  But it was knowing there would be some like these that made me include “verse” in the subtitle of my blog.  

Weather Report

(Just to share something)

February cold, implacable

Seeps through around the windows and the doors

Sun’s gleam like steel, a dull and frigid glow

Resounds in hollow tremors through my bones

But sunrise, dawning pink, proffered a peace

And later sunshine, almost generous

Sent temperature to forty-five degrees

Gave reassurance to intrepid bulbs

Yes, light returns, it spreads over the hollows

Where puddles lay before, and sometimes ice

Too thin for spring, but soon that too will follow

The buds will bulge, new life’s quick heat will rise

For now, soft clouds will swaddle up the night

To ease our gentle turning towards the light.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 2, 2011

Daily Discipline

A lot of my daily sonnets are pretty bad.  But they hone my craft at verse; they hone my ear.  This evening I said to my husband: “I turned your oatmeal off, I think it’s done,” and noticed the iambic pentameter.  Or, to take it further (as I was compelled):

“I turned your oatmeal off, I think it’s done,”

I said, and noticed five feet of iambic

I went to give a prodding to my son

Who lay, near comatose, under a blanket

The evening ticks towards its predicted end

The deep and wondrous thoughts I hoped to capture

Keep flitting off beyond my reach again

Leaving me rhymeless, stuck, devoid of rapture

At last the sticky veil of sleep is drawn

I’ll seek more brightness when the night is gone.

(Not a full sonnet, that, but I had already written a full one - even worse - so I was OK with leaving it partial.)

There are other benefits to the practice.  The search for what to write, pen poised on blank journal page, dated on top and thus requiring that something be written, sends me scanning for feelings, thoughts, whatever stands out.  So the sonnets become a chronicle of my days and thoughts, sometimes mundane, sometimes something more.  I find I need to write about what’s up now, though there is some temporal flexibility. Now can be this moment as I type, or it can be anything in my memory where the thought or feeling was strong enough to leave a spike, such that I can go back and relive it.  

I prefer reliving the high points, recapturing the lofty thoughts.  But yesterday there was a low point, actually left over from Sunday, and I found that I had to address it, to clear the landscape, in order for other things to be able to emerge.  It wasn’t a deep low; I had pretty much pushed it aside, but the fact that I needed to put it in a sonnet proved that I needed to address it in my thought, put it to bed, to re-establish my accustomed tranquility.

I left the potluck quickly and alone

I didn’t want to stay and try to chat

I felt let down by church and on my own

No one to cherish me or what I said

I was a bit embarrassed by my speech

I didn’t do as well as I have done

Didn’t practice, read it, stumbled, lurched

Didn’t tap the knowing of the One.

Not awful, but I didn’t make connection

Failed to convey the spirit I had felt

Spent too much time on other’s loose suggestions

Too little on the light the Spirit dealt

Or maybe it just wasn’t the right thing

Square peg, round hole, a message without zing.

©Wendy Mulhern