Time, and time again

Tomorrow begins National Poetry Month, and today I spent some time on poets.org, following links from their Poetry 101 page, looking at their list of poets who have defined the poetic landscape, hungrily pouring input into the cavernous gap of my ignorance. Later, while I was scrubbing the tub, I thought of two sentences: “It was so old, I was surprised to find it true;” and, “It was so true, I was surprised to find it old.”  They reflected a feeling I got while reading the poems - that our sense of literary time is different from our sense of current time, though both are real in their ways.  As a child, I mourned my lack of the landscape of stories, wishing to trade my suburban environment for the woods, the meadows, the villages that I found in books. Now these things are even further from current experience, but they seem to live on in our language of imagery.

Story Time

One part of life moves through the surface day

the texting, facebook, groceries, price of gas

Another part moves half submerged

through caves and pools of leavings from the past

This memory, this story, this impression

from which we make our maps, decide our goals

was formed before today’s brash supercession

erased the landmarks, swept away the trails

The little house, the woods, the town - all gone

The farm, the friendly neighbors, wilderness

The landscapes we imagine can’t be found

within this GPS’d and fractured place

But still we walk these paths, in stories, dreams

Within our inner world their presence gleams.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 31, 2011

The Hope of Close Encounters

Today I went with my friend Carolyn to meet a group from the Street Youth Ministries at her alpaca farm.  Shortly after we arrived, we all went out with carrots to greet the alpaca.  Their caretaker told us that the alpaca were skittish today, because a strong wind had been blowing.  He thought it affected them by roaring in their ears.  In any case, they seemed more reluctant than usual to approach us.  But eventually, some of them did.

Street youth meet Alpaca

They walk within the frames they have created

to hold their fragile sense of who they are

They point and laugh, but show appreciation

for this strange group that watches from afar

who twitch as one, and turn, alert, to scan them

and take in every move they make, all ready

to bolt, or maybe come a little closer

if something should entice them to approach

Each eager hand holds out a carrot

Each one holds out a gift in hope

The stakes almost to high for them to bear it

Alpaca-skittish, each may let it drop:

Will any of these clear-eyed wild ones see

my worthy soul inside and come to me?

©Wendy Mulhern
March 30, 2011

Held in Love

Today I wanted to write a poem about a wonderful feeling that comes to me sometimes, in early morning prayer or just in sudden moments, a feeling of being suspended in Love.  It’s about feeling completely cared for - not weightless but with every part of me supported and nothing strained.  And with ‘every part of me’ including everything I love, all those I care about.  Maybe the poem does better than these words.

Held in Love

Everything I am, and all I’ve tended -

my loves, my children, all their early flights

my own delayed attempts to shine my light

are held forever safe in Love suspended.

I never felt this free; though I pretended

my intellect could take me to a height

where I could chart a course and judge it right,

my dreams still squirmed unsure, over-extended.

But now I feel Love’s grasp on us so sure

each one established in our perfect sphere

all our connections elegant and pure

we never need be anywhere but here.

All that Love ordains for us endures

Love carries us, Love’s way is always clear.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 29, 2011

A bit of frivolity

It was an active day today, and at the end of it, I chose to watch a show with my family instead of writing a poem.  In the interests of togetherness, frivolity is sometimes appropriate.  So in the frivolous mode I set by my actions this evening, I will share my most recent verse about pulling ivy:

The Yard Waste Truck Comes Early Tomorrow Morning

I raked the ground so I could see

where roots and shoots protruded

so all the ivy finally

could truly be uprooted

It isn’t done, the roots remain

their network branches deep

They’ve had some years to make their claim

within the yard waste heap

Year upon year of heaped neglect

I strive to overcome

No more than what one would expect

in maintenance of a home

A basic fact I somehow never grasped

Till tangled up in all I had let lapse.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 27, 2011

Another dance sonnet

I wrote two poems today - well, maybe one of them would be called a verse.  The verse is about pulling ivy (again - yard waste is collected every other week).  The poem is another one about the dance that we often go to on Friday nights.  I wanted to try an Italian form sonnet; the rhyme scheme is more demanding than the Shakespearean style I have used most often.

The constraints of the sonnet are: line length and rhythm (iambic pentameter); number of lines (14); rhyme scheme (Italian: abbaabba for the eight, with the following six related to each other - I’ve seen cdfcdf or, as I did here, cdcdcd).  Plus there’s an intent for the first eight lines to present a scenario and the finishing six to comment and conclude.

I like to let the rhythm vary a bit from the iambic.  I don’t like to turn a sentence inside out for a rhyme.  I don’t say something that’s not true for the sake of a rhyme.  Those are my added constraints.

I find that writing within constraints is interesting.  It sometimes helps bring out the meaning more clearly than writing without them.

I’ll share the sonnet tonight:

Ode to the dance

Stepping softly in between the shafts of sound

the trancing hum of chords reverberating

weft and warp in fabric of relating

threads of touch remembered and rewound

In dancing eyes fresh lines of light are found

a joyful glee of friends appreciating

the playful moves, the games of their creating

the sudden bursts of energy unbound

As music, words, and movement thus are one

so are we one in the reverberation

that still remains when all the music’s done

and we have voiced our final incantation

The web of our connection lightly spun

reprised thus in a quiet exaltation.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 27, 2011

Bouncing back

On March 23rd, I noted in my journal that my poems always tended to be optimistic - that even if they started low, they would bounce up at the end like one of those weighted punch clowns.  I decided that that wasn’t a problem as long as optimism wasn’t one of my constraints - if they were doing that on their own without my forcing them in that direction.  Then, the very next day, I wrote a poem that didn’t bounce up at the end.  What was interesting to me was that I did - bounce up, I mean.  I felt absolutely exhilarated after posting that poem, and did, all day yesterday, as well.  My sense was that the joy came from the success of the poem at capturing a somewhat elusive feeling and thought pattern so exactly.

So I failed to write a poem yesterday.  I realized that perhaps I had to reset the bar, and not try to capture anything particularly profound (after all, I hadn’t tried to before, even when I felt I succeeded).  

Having done so, and turning honestly once again to what’s at hand, I came upon a topic that my husband and I have both been thinking about, in our different ways, of late.  The wondering why we do what we do, the shifting of thought towards a different sphere:

Moving On

In weary sameness once again you slide your tray

past each seductive offering in the display

of nothing that could satisfy the gap within

your plate still empty as you reach the end

So is this why we choose to die - we lack

the bright desire to keep us coming back?

We could go on, but wonder what’s the use

(the reasons, glorious before, now seem obtuse)

Or is there more than what is offered here

a way to focus thought between the things

to listen with a more celestial ear

for strains beyond what the commercials sing?

 - Seek substance in a different kind of sphere

and find the joy that strong connection brings.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 26, 2011

Doing the Math

This poem reflects a feeling that came upon me today several times, and though I managed to beat it back, it insisted on being what I tell about.

I had a bad time with math in high school, but I loved certain parts of it - the beautiful curves and the notion of them being generated from equations.  I would grasp the concepts but fall down in the execution of problems.  The same story may play itself out in other aspects of my life.

Story Problem

Here is a place of feeling lonely

a point of discontinuity

a no man’s land between the asymptotes

X marks the degenerate set

no bounding parabolic curve for me,

 - ever upward, ever steeper -

no perfect circle, no elegant ellipse

no connection to the conic section

Here is a place of feeling lonely

a point of discontinuity

no connection to logic or reality

or the events of the day

Can I fall, thus

down along the asymptotes

ever approaching

never fully touched?

©Wendy Mulhern
March 24, 2011

Bike Ride to Brackett’s Landing

 Sunny, 60 degrees

A wind that buffets me but isn’t cold

One inhale’s gift of blossom as I fly

The sun’s light touch that raises up my soul

The water’s glint as I go swiftly by

The pattern of the shadows on the concrete -

rails and steps on ramp up from the underpass

The echo of my song, sustained though incomplete,

hurled down the tunnel while I’m rolling fast

These, with the words that follow melody

Trying their rhythms on the mellow tune

that floats within me answering my tunnel cry

bring heightened pleasure to my afternoon

Ah, spring! How clear the vision you inspire!

How rich the scents! How sweet the homage you require.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 23, 2011

Love’s Plan

I’m not allowed to think myself alone

and struggling to find where I belong

Each effort to invent myself will fall

as sure as piles of sand against the sea.

So it is with things I haven’t done

and times I’ve been so proud, and been so wrong

There never was a chance for them at all

as long as I had hopes to rescue me.

A precious part of Love’s unique design

is how the loss of what I have called mine

will reset my assumptions, so I find

identity at one with the divine.

So, meekly cleansed, I then can lift my face

to Love’s bright pattern and my perfect place.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 22, 2011

Weather Report II

No, this isn’t about the first day of spring, except in the way it was colder and wetter than hoped for, and felt bleaker since I was expecting warmer.  It’s rather about the way a cold front, when it comes in, needs to move through before it clears.  The argument I wrote about yesterday was not, despite what the poem seemed to indicate, solved at once.  Today I felt bleak and bleary, and grouchy.  But I took a bike ride in the late afternoon, for fresh air and to find a poem.  I liked the poem I found - the rhythm appropriately pugnacious.  And the ride and the poem revived me.  

A riddle: why not settle into grouchiness

growl, baleful, at the fickle sky and shake your fist

succumb to world’s weight drag down into slouchiness

call it one of those days that - face it - won’t be missed?

Indeed, it seems the path of least resistance

Why summon up the needed grim persistence?

When has the sun come out through sheer insistence?

To find success would seem to need a sixth sense

But maybe if you wait a bit you’ll find one

Surprising uplift can come up behind one

and tickle evil feelings till they’re undone

and dissipate like fog banks in the bright sun

The answer: sure, be grouchy if you must

The light will still come reignite your trust.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 21, 2011

Seasoned love

My husband and I have been married for a long time.  On my bike ride yesterday, I was reflecting how solid I feel about our love.  Wishing I could give encouragement to young couples who might be in the throes of tension and passion, wishing I could somehow say to them don’t worry, lean into love - it’s stronger than all your dramas.

It also may go without saying that not every moment has been rosy.  I was thinking about that on the ride, too - and how I really think we’ve moved beyond the place of angry dramas.  So it was funny when, on our walk this afternoon, my husband turned around abruptly and started storming back.  “I don’t need this,”  he said.  “This is not what I came for.”  I walked on, the distance widening between us.

I wasn’t really upset.  I think it’s true that our love is a solid enough cushion to keep our sensibilities unscratched.  But I had been looking for a poem, and the one that started to come reflected my position.  It also reflected my sense of the power of love.

I didn’t think I’d share it.  It’s (sort of) dirty laundry, not showing either of us in our best light. (Him, because I say he grumbles, etc.  Me, because I say he grumbles, etc.) But I like the poem, and no other ones sprang to pen tip.  So here it is:

The argument continues in the poet’s thought:

Admit it: it takes more than wit and gumption

It takes great love and humbleness of heart

to navigate your minefields of assumptions

though I can take no credit for my art

The Love that guides me through them is much larger

than what romance or reason might require

The universal law that is in charge here

will save us both from your reactive fire

So now, though you’ve withdrawn into your grumbles

of what you don’t have time for, and your cold

rehearsal of your valid indignation

here is the place of peace that I can hold:

The Love that made us burns as love within us

and it will lift us, bless us, purge us, win us.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 20, 2011

For Heather, approaching the super moon

I remember you

moonfaced

miraculous

pulling my life’s tides

We went to see the super moon

to watch it swing over the ocean

to be women - four of us.  You at eight months

qualified

in the mystical incantation

decreed by Sus

who understood these things deeply

earth mother that she was.

I remember

the weight of you, in the blue backpack

but Sus must have carried you, too

for I remember seeing

your eyes wide, reaching your small hand

to touch the old growth trees

on the way to the beach

We moved as one in those days

You called me “me” and you “you.”

I can still feel in my hand

how it felt to your hand

the spongy/prickly, gray-green, furry/lacy

intricate web of moss and bark

your eyes registering ancient connection.

“Super moon tomorrow,” the news said.

“The last one was eighteen years ago.”

I remember.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 18, 2011

Fractured Discourse

Yesterday I followed, on the site of the Academy of American Poets, a discourse between a white male poet and a black female poet about race, and a series of letters that she then invited to open up the dialog.  One point made was that the community of poets was itself a small, white group, dripping with privilege, though thinking their modest salaries made them immune to such designation.  I started thinking the issue was maybe not so much what people choose to say about race as who is saying it, whose voice gets the chance to be heard.  And that this particular society of poets was perhaps a small group, and there were others, but their circles might never intersect.

Also yesterday, incensed by things I was hearing from the far right, I started to pen an apology to President Obama:

“I fear we are a nation of buffoons

I witnessed it on Youtube yesterday . . .”

(that’s as far as I got)

These two threads of thought wove together to form the following:

Trying to Make Ourselves Heard

We speak in fractured space

Our stories are refracted

confined within our shards

that cut off interaction

Our words reflect back inward

from the walls of our partitions

and no one on the outside

can hear us anymore

What does it matter to them what we have to say?

All the king’s horses and all the king’s men

. . . . . babel . . . .

And so they left off to build the city.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 17, 2011

Two for Japan

My life walks on with its normal considerations, and I grumble inwardly about the weather (windy, rainy, raw) and the time change, while in Japan everything has been turned upside down.  What about the tsunami?  What about that which stops everything?  Attention turns from Libya to Japan, though the fierce dramas unfolding in Libya and Bahrain continue.  As does the sniping in Afghanistan, and the myriad struggles in Africa.  I guess I have no choice but to live my own life, where I am.  And, as long as it’s not disturbed, proceed as normal.  Homework, life aspirations, weddings in the family . . . 

But here are two for Japan:

I.

Just a trifled shuffling of the earth

and all that seemed established came unmoored

swept and tossed and flowing, falling downward

in a moment wasted, mired and marred

plans and dreams, like cars and houses carried

creaking, from the hopes that held them fast

a stark today; tomorrow has been buried

left in the jumbled rubble of the past.

Of death and what it means - who can say

if they’re set free, or face horrendous trials

but the survivors - what they face - oh let us pray

for healing for their decimated isles

and let us pause in silence for their sorrow

what came to them may come to us tomorrow.

II.

Here and now, the only truth is goodness

whatever has been spewed and spilled and tumbled

Here and now, the quiet space of promise

of character that rises from the rubble

Here and now, hands reach out in compassion

People stop, rethink their frenzied paths

Hearts are inundated with emotion

and grasp the anchored love that holds them fast

“We will rebuild,” they say, “and stronger, better.”

“It’s what we’re here to do, and so we must.”

We see the triumph of determination

the solid impulse where they place their trust

We never wish such sharp calls to survive

but here and now, this people is alive.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 15, 2011

Lurching Forward

My family, befuddled by the lurch of springing forward

totters through the starting steps of day

We stumble toward the afternoon at risk of crashing floor-ward

It isn’t our design to live this way

In nature’s wisdom, light’s return comes incrementally 

a quiet step on each side of the day

But commerce grabs the hour of evening greedily

without a care what we may have to say

It turns its gears and spits us night for morning

We reel and grumble to our daily tasks

But then our equilibrium adjusts itself, and slowly

we rise from depths towards what the morning asks

No worries - light’s swift wings will overtake us

bear us up where true spring can embrace us.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 15, 2011

Finding your voice

A friend posted a link to a video of a high school valedictorian who used her speech to criticize the system that she had slaved for through the years of her schooling.  She urged students to find their own voices, and not succumb to the pressure to be molded into automatons for the system of corporate economy.  

I tried to shield my own children from this system.  I said, as a new parent, “Children are born knowing who they are.  My goal is that my children still know when they get through school.”  And, I think, to a great extent, they do know.  But my heart went out to this valedictorian for her courage and the task ahead of her, knowing from my own experience that re-discovering who you are can be a monumental task.

The Valedictorian

She said she wished no more to do as bidden

 - too long a slave to school’s arcane demands

She hoped to find where her own spark was hidden

to open out her life with her own hands

She found it her most difficult assignment

the voices of the system so entwined

within her thought, she couldn’t seem to find it

What did she want? What, here, was her own mind?

The layers, like cabbage leaves so tightly wrapped

her voice so far inside as to be silent

while criticisms, cynical and apt

mimic her voice to snipe at her alignment

Take heart, oh Daughter - what your wish has summoned

will rise, will decompress, will overcome.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 13, 2011

Thoughts make themselves known

If I hadn’t tried to write it in a poem, the thought, a little glimmer, would have expressed itself in far different ways.  Did, in fact; I wrote a page in my journal about cleaning the house while thoughts hovered just at the edge of my accepting them - borderline negative, but held at bay by some impervious membrane.  I came to the place of seeing how much the same we all are, for all our sense of singularity and frequent isolation.  We all need to bring forth that within us which makes us who we are.  In poetry, it came out like this:

There is no existential fact of night

the word speaks of the endless depth of space

the field wherein the play of stars is staged

Each star gives tribute to the light

Each star must serve the existential light

the pulse within, essential churning force

which rises out of need and tumbles forth

We see their sharp travail across the night

We see their offering across the night

and know we, too, must ever do the same

we too must birth our inner urgent flame

Each life gives tribute to the light.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 12, 2011

You Shine

For Aud, on her birthday

as phosphorescence calls to star

across the wide abyss of scale and space

as smiling dancers catch each other’s eye

in liquid motion of communal grace

as laughter flows like mountain streams

reflecting sunlight, bright cascading thread

as shared remembrance brings out precious dreams

collecting gravity to hold connection steady

so your strong line of light calls forth the spark

that makes us feel accepted and connected

you shine, and we glow forth against the dark

shine on shine, down chains of light reflected

amid life’s scrambles, worries, hopes, and woe

you shine - I wanted you to know.

with love from Wendy

©Wendy Mulhern
March 11, 2011

Mars Cafe, evening

A quiet place for tea and talk

candle light and smile light

thoughts to share

the rain outside forgotten in the inner warmth

that was there.

So it begins

a new friend

a chance to care

Itself a little miracle

(How does it start? How does it take root?

Will it bloom?)

- an answered prayer.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 9, 2011

Homework

Father and son

work on math

socks abandoned on the floor

beneath the stools on which they sat

to pore through textbooks

try equations

series

permutations

probabilities.

The heat of mind exertion rises

rests on cheeks, enlivens eyes

The problems don’t turn off at night

impinge on sleep of father

(not of son, who crashes mightily

and fills with languor deep and thick)

Both hard to rouse come morning.

But next day, they resume

(what did you get for number four?)

and though the son will not admit it

a smile hovers

just behind his mouth.

They power through together.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 8, 2011

Flying Turtles

I let the breathing and the chords entrance

me in the inter-weavings of the dance

where arms could touch and bring another in

to an embrace that swayed as we’d begin

to move in single pulsing waves as one

to give each other’s touch permission and

each one a welcome not to be alone.

We moved in holy breath, entwining arms

the steady strength of backs against each other

or fingers brushed like butterflies together

and separated by a common wind

then stirred into a frenzied, twirling blend.

We leave our fears and judgment well away

So all can permeate us in their way.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 3, 2010

Ivy

Today I pulled invasive ivy from the backyard, while my husband sat with his father in the emergency room after we received a call that he (my father-in-law) had been delivered there after fainting in church.  And I had several sweet new communications via facebook, and my son and my husband powered through math in spite of setbacks.  Later (with me still smelling of ivy) my husband and I talked of past and future - disappointments and resolutions relating to his father.  All of which amounted to the following:

Ivy Twining

The ivy is my worthy yard opponent

It teaches me of life as I uproot it

It spreads its complicated woven networks

I comb the loam for horizontal runners

Today I planted several tender tendrils

Beginning branchings that I hope will grow

Nets that can, entwined, uphold each other

A web of trust that all of us can know

While in another branching of the family

The knotted roots of past - betrayal, anger

Pulled consequences out from distant reaches

Touched off by small deception’s ancient hold

I rip out armloads, stuff it all away

As ivy’s images creep, wily, through my day.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 6, 2011

Touch

I went to the Turtle Dance last night, and realized, towards the end of it, how I crave touch.  Not just the touch of one other, though that is nice, but the intertwined, complex touch of many people moving together.  

The Turtle Dance is a weekly ecstatic dance frequented by people who often express the conviction that they are part of an inexorable love revolution - yes, somewhat hippie - and sometimes, when I’m there, I can believe it.  Sometimes I go away feeling that no one there knows me or cares whether I’m there, though they seem to care about each other.  Other times I feel like I belong.  The difference is in whether I have been in a good, multi-person, intertwining dance.

A touch can be a chord, a hum, a tuning

A circuit closed, electric-lighting joy

The answer to my silent, nameless yearning

that carries me through darkness to the day

A touch can form a net of strong connection

A place to hold my fragile, new-formed soul

A current that delivers satisfaction

The DNA for growing strong and whole.

Though I may live without it, my deep hunger

will send me searching for it in its time

I’ll need to twine my tendrils with some others

and wind around to reach the light, and climb.

I’ll drink touch in for what it can provide;

My need for contact will not be denied.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 5, 2011

Cricket in a Grass Cage

I turned on the light and went into the cold room, closing the door behind me.  I opened the sliding closet door and, on my knees, began to take the shoes off the plastic box.  Why, I asked myself, do you keep your writings in a box that is so hard to get to, and whose lid is so hard to open - as I wrestled with the tightly snapped-on plastic.  

I was looking for a poem I wrote in high school.  I remembered most of it, and remembered writing it, how the phrase “cricket in a grass cage,” had just come to mind, and how the words had effortlessly unfolded from there, revealing their story.  I was thinking about how, though the sentiment wasn’t one I had striven to express, it seemed true enough at the time.  And how, though I hadn’t acknowledged it then, the poem was probably influenced by Dylan Thomas’ “Fern Hill,” a poem my mother loved and had shared with me.

The copy that I found was one I had prepared to submit for publication, and I had changed some words from the ones I remembered, and had left out a stanza to make it more taut (so I thought).  But the missing stanza was one that, for me, drove the rhythm and feeling of the poem, and left its strong mark on my memory, so I put it back.  

The poem has the sensibilities of a high school student, but I still like it.

Cricket in a Grass Cage

Before myself, we used to fly

And walk life’s mountain paths

Our step was sure and we were strong

And we could see forever

There was no limit

All we knew was hinder-free

High bouncing or whatever

In a never-time or instant

Life was sweet - we learned to sing its song

In timeless - free and easy - laughter

And in tender caring, tears

With joy and softly knowing, never fears

But slowly or with crashing 

Came myself, and I am here

And time was thrust upon a soul

And ticking limits hold my flight

They measure out the tune

All is chained except the spirit

And I am here

With no free movement very far

With no free will to go or stay

So little to express my being

With only me to say I am.

And so I sing my song

Like a cricket in a grass cage

With all the glory of the meadow

Confined in this precise bamboo.

©Wendy Mulhern
Spring, 1974

Innocence

Writing in my journal today, I paused, and wrote, “incite insight” - just a sentence that came to mind.  It reminded me of a set of poems I wrote in college, around the time of my first love.

I keep the poems on an index card in a once-white plastic file box which contains my recipes.  After desserts there’s a tab that says “linguists’ assertions”, and contains quotes about various kinds of presuppositions.  The tab after that is blank, and behind it are poems, and pep talks to myself.  The first poem of the set is missing, but no matter - I know it by heart.

Innocence

I

Innocence

In a sense

Unwarned, in love encaptured

Unaware how not to care

In loving arms enwrapped

Enraptured.

II.

Innocence

In essence

A warming concord captured

Well aware how much we care

As Love holds us enwrapped

Enraptured.

III.

Innocence

In us, sense

To see our source of rapture

The wonder of untrammeled love

That trust makes us so apt

To capture.

©Wendy Mulhern
-Spring, 1980 (I think)