Singularity

The evil beast will get you if it can.

Bear in mind:

It doesn’t have your interests at heart.

If you plea for lenience,

if you consent

to be at its mercy,

if you let it choose the rules,

it won’t choose in a way that favors you.

Stand up! It’s in your nature

to set the boundaries for your life,

to determine who you are

and what your heart designs.

It isn’t your nature

(despite the claims the beast intensely makes)

to let external arguments

define your place.

It may use a smooth and syrupy voice,

but never think

that what you want is sleep,

that you prefer to let what’s done to you

define you.

You know who you are

and you are called, right here, right now

to be that being,

to live your own unique, exquisite truth,

to hold firm in your singular perception

that balances the turning of the world.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 31, 2013

Wilderness

Walking here

I have to admit

I don’t know anything —

Nothing I could package

and deliver as a

Thing That I Have Learned.

I have no map for myself —

No one’s words hover at my shoulder,

especially not my own —

no conclusion I can make,

no lesson I can take from here on forward.

In what way can I say I know anything,

of life, of love, of death?

Yet when I close my eyes

and follow my breath

into the undergrowth of dream,

I feel like a wilderness

and it feels good.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 30, 2013

To Chris: Angel Wizard

It took coming together

to know

the gift of your questions —

to see how broadly they were cast

and how we each,

from our deep longing to be heard,

were so enchanted —

sweet that you should ask,

sweet that you should listen

with such articulate and cogent interest —

the light so thrown on us

that (what now seems surprising)

we never thought to ask about the source —

that unassuming shining

that reached out to hold us up

and make a structure

in which we held the love

to keep you safe.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 29, 2013

Centrifuge

Hold my hand,

for we are spinning

and I feel the power

of the centrifuge:

We could scatter,

we could be adrift,

we could grow cold.

Hold my hand

and we will be a wheel,

Hold my hand —

we’ll be a constellation;

With the force

of our collective gravity,

we’ll keep this warmth;

With our collective radiance

we will cohere.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 28, 2013

A Moment of Silence

(for Chris and Aviva, or maybe for the rest of us)

A moment of silence

for the parting of worlds,

a separation I don’t understand

though it is frequent —

It’s like when a stone

drops into water —

the ripples spread out on the surface

as the water is opened

and then closes

with the blip of its round edges

coming back together

But the stone is in a different world —

the medium is thicker

and it falls more slowly

down and down

even as our marking of it

moves out and out

I can only imagine them —

all the edges of awareness

keenly open

as they enter

the next adventure,

perpendicular to that which we perceive.

A moment of silence

to let the stone fall through,

and feel the ripple.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 27, 2013

Living at the cambium

I start to understand

living at the cambium —

that thin and vibrant layer

between structure and protection

where everything is new-born

and anything can change

I may have viewed my life

projected over time

as some determined specimen

which could be judged and graded

and would end

But here in this experience

of ever-new creation

in the eager greening 

before the form —

this place of generation

which pushes out the growing tips

and thrives,

There is no noun of me,

no stepping back for an assessment,

no self-image, nothing to defend,

just this new greenness,

this reverberating verb, 

the forming of a now that never ends.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 25, 2013

Turn Away

Turn away —

Do you have to see each hook,

each place along the ladder

where each of us has been

so deftly tethered?

(Most of us don’t even try

to find release,

deeming the resulting fall

too perilous a risk)

Turn away,

for you don’t need to fight the structure,

You only need to cease to give it life.

Turn away

by turning towards your truth, your love,

Walk there

and all the hooks will fade.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 24, 2013

Guarantees

Though you can’t bet

on this or that falling ball —

where it will land in the bell curve,

and you can’t count

on this or that seed —

if it will grow, if it will bear,

You can still count

on the filling in

of every niche

till every need is met.

It is the law of water,

it is the law of love

that in the snowmelt,

though some places

thaw more slowly,

every channel will deliver

down the mountain,

with mounting joy,

the full reward

for winter’s meditations.

It is the law of truth

that with abundant acts of life,

some will sprout,

enough will bear,

and you will be sustained.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 23, 2013

Your mind is fine

I invite you to consider:

If you ever felt stupid

because of something

you couldn’t grasp,

however often people hashed 

through explanations,

Perhaps you couldn’t get it

just because it made no sense,

and where you stood,

you couldn’t see 

the flattening

that lent a sense 

of contiguity,

or how others could think

that it was clear . . .

And even if

no words arose within

to clarify your reason for confusion,

it still revealed perception

of something left unheeded,

a missing piece of something

maybe you could sense was needed.

Your mind is fine

and it will guide you,

if you give it rein,

into your truth.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 22, 2013

No Regrets

No regrets

for life falls like water

down its course —

The same law always pulls us,

The same law always rights us —

What we choose in any instant

is the product

of precisely where we were,

and from precisely where we are

we always choose

what seems essential

No regrets —

in the wild space of now,

suspended in air,

in vapor or in free fall,

in current or in back flow,

or sucked up in the taproot of a plant,

We still are held

in Life’s law,

and Life will always see us through.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 21, 2013

This is real

We will seek the place

where our hands can tell us:

This is real —

This is the deep soil

that clings in fingerprints,

that insists on connection;

This is the hidden liquid

that rises up through stems and leaves,

its constant, unseen circulation

the standing wave for all the green of life;

This is the spark —

electrical and necessary interchange

that makes us sure

we are alive and needed,

Where our hands and hearts can tell us:

This is real.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 20, 2013

The Tutelage of Life

The garden and I

start to blur our edges

as I lend it my substance

and it feeds me:

Weeds become harvest,

Crucial factors, before inscrutable,

become apparent

From humility

arises mastery,

From tending ground

arises groundedness,

From placing myself here

in the tutelage of life,

I find my native stride,

I find my place.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 19, 2013

The Law of Life

There is no wiggle

in the law that holds you,

no way to fall out of the cause

of your every movement,

no way not to be swept

in the wheeling intricacy

of the cosmic dance of all things.

No way not to act

according to your nature,

as simple as the goodness

of each intention,

as complex as

the allness of the law.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 17, 2013

Still Point

Seeking stillness,

seeking coolness,

you sink gratefully

into the center point

where everything expands

in endless depth,

patterns and colors

incidental to the clear focus

as the stillness opens on and on —

round sound welcomes you in,

with ample room for echoes.

There is as much time here

as it ever takes

to coalesce, to find home,

to be reborn.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 16, 2013

Good Times

We came riding down

chutes of laughter

like kids on a water slide —

great swoops of bright sound

cascading and splashing

and we felt renewed,

and we set each other off

again and again,

perhaps less for amusement

than for how it made us feel —

ready to scamper around

and up the ladder again.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 15, 2013

Hollows

Sound loves hollows —

deep bodies of cellos,

silver shafts of flutes,

wet echoes of tunnels

and the ever-longing span

between the heart and throat

In the roundness of the cavity —

concave convergence of the waves —

the sound can dance and dance 

and gather strength

till it emerges, pure and confident

Some hollows must remain unfilled,

must wait in ready emptiness

to send the sweet song 

down the cove of deep desire —

must welcome it in circled emptiness

a steady vigilance

that holds the still

that gathers joy.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 14, 2013

Thermal Mass

In this shared center of ours

there is a warmth

stored from holding hands,

and all those confidences,

all the smiles and laughter

and deep recognition

It is a warmth

which, in the cool of evening

radiates a comfort

that draws us ever more together

We will use this principle

in our design —

the one that offers home

for many people,

the one that uses what we are

to generate what we can give

and multiplies what we can give away.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 13, 2013

Desire as Prayer

The strait and narrow way

is made entirely of yes,

and so, to know my yes

is my salvation

Desire is prayer,

and here is my desire,

uncensored and unspoken,

only understood

in the resolution of my heart,

the longing of my soul, my lips, my skin

Here is my prayer

answered in the gravity of being,

the seated ground, centripetal cohesion

in which I am aligned with all I am

Though I may have no words

or even images,

no explanation of what this might be,

I feel it here, with all of my existence:

Prayer is answered;

this desire

will keep on guiding me.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 12, 2013

Last Light

The last light of the sun

shines window panes and tree limbs onto walls

which shimmer golden

in its lingering touch.

Tall trees, too,

find themselves blessed,

kissed against dramatic eastern skies —

a flush of farewell purple

suffuses everything

before the cooling hush 

of day’s goodbye.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 11, 2013

The way it has to be

Life is life —

in every place it finds itself,

it has one goal:

to live —

And living is the grace

of making more life,

more branching life-ways,

more ways more life can thrive.

You are life,

and you have always, always

let yourself be borne

along the course

of Life’s enduring flow,

effortless, inexorable

in your resplendent gravitas

No false stories

can divert your motion,

compelled, as you are

by Life’s law:

You will grow,

and you will bring with you

lush gardens,

rich communities,

deep fecundity

of soil and seed —

so much fruit will come

so naturally, from what you bring,

from your saying yes

to what you are.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 10, 2013

Structures

Let me release myself

from structures that have washed away my depth —

the headlong chutes 

of expectations and assumptions,

and criticism’s unforgiving hardpan.

Let me take time

for Life’s slow flow —

luxuriating stretching of connection —

nourishing exchange of living substance.

Let Life’s structures grow

according to the rules

that Life alone can set

and let me fill my tiny place

in this vast net

that holds us with a closeness

that we’ve always craved,

for here, in Life’s embrace, I will be saved.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 9, 2013

Doors

There’s much more room

here in my mind

than I thought,

for any one of these doors —

any one of them! —

can open,

and each one opens to infinity.

This room I may have thought

was my perimeter —

closed doors marked as places I can’t go:

people I have deemed unlike me,

people I don’t know —

I can open these doors

(forgiveness somehow seems to be the key)

so all that light

floods in

And where before

I was blocked off,

now I have a vast world to explore.

Love, as it turns out,

is not linear —

it radiates

in an expanding sphere.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 7, 2013

Yes

I say yes

to your innocence,

Yes

to your innate beauty,

Yes

to the rightness of your purpose.

Yes

to the clarity

with which your essence —

from the sub-molecular on up —

informs your wholeness,

impels your action

in the perfect dance of service

where you feel

so providential,

so propitious,

so graced to be able to give

that which enables the loop of life

to thrive

I say yes to you

and nothing —

no phantom shadows of supposed necessities,

no lies about your substance or your motives —

can blind me to the truth of who you are.

I say yes,

and in this vast permission

there’s enough room

for your magnificent infinity

to be expressed.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 6, 2013

Resistance

We will slide

with the weight of water

out from the grasp

of all that sought to hold us.

We will collect in pools,

we will run in rivulets,

very quietly at first.

We will hide

in soft hollows

and be taken up by roots.

We will engage in cycles

that can’t be regimented.

We will use the tools

that can’t be taken from us —

gravity and surface tension,

super qualities inherent in our molecules.

Without our presence, all the structures —

every edifice of fear and guilt,

all the avenues of shame and blame,

all the lies that say we need their toxic brew —

will tend towards dust, becoming very dry,

will grow more brittle, and will start to fail.

It won’t be long before they blow away

and cease to plague our world.

We will slide softly

but with growing power.

We will build with what’s alive.

We’ll own our moments

and claim our hours,

and in our reclaimed truth,

we’ll thrive.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 4, 2013

A Dream

The power started calling.

Its lines were well-developed —

vast networks underground —

and it started calling her.

Its call was stronger, more persistent,

than the voices of caution,

the voices of fear,

that said

this is not human,

you would betray humanity

to take it up.

And she knows she has to do it

so she goes —

follows its direction down suburban streets,

finds the corner place and reaches down

to heft the golden bricks.

The power comes up out of the earth

in swirls of white and gold.

A deep hole forms, and the swirls keep rising.

A woman in a windbreaker

stands beside her, resolute,

her jacket flapping in the rising of the power.

She says, But I need to stand in defense of love!

Don’t I need to stand in defense of love?

The voice says, Love doesn’t need to be defended.

She says, But I need to stand in defense of the earth!

Don’t I need to stand in defense of the earth?

The voice says,

The earth doesn’t need to be defended.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 3, 2013

Succession

(for Edward)

In the way that ecosystems climax,

You and I are most-enduring trees,

surviving fires, holding the soil,

spreading our crowns

to shelter and extend

life’s dear elixir

And you have been

my strong companion,

filling in where I have faltered,

anchor of my habitat

throughout the years.

In the way that Life designs us —

brought forth where our purpose can be met,

So, now, I see it finds you

in the time where you’re uniquely set

to bless

It is my privilege

to witness you, and your unfolding,

and to hold with you

and keep on holding,

while all our former fetters fall away

and we stand splendid

in the dawning truth of day.

Happy birthday, love —

©Wendy Mulhern

July 2, 2013

A new way of looking at patience

Patience is knowing

that everything moves

in the rhythm of Life,

and every need is being met —

all the microscopic needs

in the give and take

that feeds each tiny mouth,

and the orchestrated needs

of larger systems —

great living networks

of realized mutual trust,

resulting in the intricately timed provision

of each response along the moving wave

And as this is the case,

Life’s essence operating

in every place,

it surely will continue

in the arc whereon you gaze,

anticipating some desired conclusion.

Grace is not capricious,

not the gain of luck or chance —

it is the rhythm,

fractally repeated,

present where you need it —

it is the constant motion

of Life’s defining dance.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 1, 2013