Guidance

I am thankful your desire

is stronger than your will,

stronger than your resolutions,

stronger than anything that I,

in my foolish teaching,

may have installed.

Your desire is a persistent weight

that always, in the end, plumbs true.

It will lead you

to just what you need.

It will feed you

all that completes you,

all that delivers you

to the life-filling purpose

that is you, that is your home.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 31, 2013

Symphony Road, Boston

Through the city windows throb

music and voices from a life

that is not mine,

though the tendrils of connection

from my past

still reach deep into my psyche,

and the allure

of living that life

with the skills I have now

tickles my dreams.

But my face in the mirror shows me

this life is as far removed from me

as those voices,

close across the narrow street,

stories and walls away.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 30, 2013

Doing Things Together

We did not sail in the rain

though we came right to the edge of it

in the sweet game of willingness

to enter the space of shared experience,

to find the delight 

in each other’s pleasure,

to join in at something 

that all of us love.

Anyone’s strong intent

would have brought the others along

but we all decided

in the grey mist and wind on the shore

that we’d be better served

going home

to hang out together and bake things

in the cozy kitchen,

letting the wind outside

wrap us in a soft cocoon.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 29, 2013

Logan Airport — Ground Transportation

Certain things can be written

in the roar of the airport terminal

where buses wheeze and screech

in the echoing concrete beneath the interchange.

The words are not soft,

though there’s a calmness in our waiting

and good-naturedness in others

in this slowing space

along the disparate trajectories of travel.

It’s too loud and hard

amid the engines and the beeping carts

to find an outward peace —

It is a time to patiently endure,

a din to send my focus inward.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 27, 2013

Refuge

I’m putting down roots,

finding anchor

against the dizzy winds,

the strident lying stories

that have swirled us all our lives

as we tried to find meaning

in the vague continuity

offered by their endless repetition.

In the stillness of groundedness

the winds seem harder

but they serve to reinforce

the sense of refuge,

the place of home,

the finding of the solid truth on which I stand,

the rock from which I now shall not be moved.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 27, 2013

Napping

While we nap

wind blows through the house,

doors slam,

rain patters outside.

Your hand twitches —

you’re already under.

I hear the cars roar by.

A jay squawks, and a flicker.

A little dog is yapping

and we are here in a sweet space

connected by the rise and fall of our breathing

and this short span of time

before I go.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 26, 2013

Edges

The waning day moon

cruised across the breathless sky,

the air caught in that magic freshness —

sun warmed coolness —

drawing all breath to its attention.

Then clouds converged

along the bounds of summer

and rain came down to wash us

towards the edge of fall.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 25, 2013

Desire

In your time

you will find

the sweet imperative,

the nectar you must drink —

the one, right now

that shoots through you like light,

that holds you up

as water holds up herbs

and makes you grow,

ever more unfolding into what you are.

And when it’s done

there’ll be a new imperative —

It will taste different

(the old one will no longer do)

and you will know it from your craving

and how your thirst rises up to meet it

and to crest in satisfaction

as you’re nourished.

This is how we know our way —

we are designed

to want what we most need.

It is the way of everything that lives

and it has worked

for more years than our counting minds can fathom.

Trust your truth!

It will grow ever clearer

as you lean into

the wind of your desire.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 23, 2013

Paradigm Collapse

In that weightlessness

before the house’s falling,

after the struts were pulled out

one by one,

the structure growing ever weaker

though we hadn’t noticed

(distracted as we were

by the eventually frantic

clang of loud music

and waving of hands,

garish colors paraded

ever more urgently

to keep us from paying attention)

But it gets to the point

where each strut, as it’s removed,

may be the last —

The structure is swaying,

soon to twist and crumple

and when we see it there

in that weightless moment

before the fall,

We start to realize

This all has been a dream.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 22, 2013

Transformation

In the chrysalis

there’s nothing to talk about —

nothing of the former experience

with any relevance

to the transformation at hand

Unless, of course, there is —

unless the subtle flavors

of all those different leaves

you munched voraciously

with no articulation as to why —

Will now reveal themselves to be

precisely what you needed,

as their gifts are taken in and reconfigured

in the life for which the caterpillar had no words

but maybe somehow craved.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 21, 2013

El Dorado Canyon

I fall into this place,

into a space deeper than words,

deeper than names and concepts,

deep as the dark pink of these boulders,

fresh fallen, broken open,

deep as the cool shadows

holding out against the cooking climb of sun,

hidden as the paths of roots

buried by rockfall,

thrusting and exploring underground

like those that twist along the surface

before they dive in.

No words can reach here now,

in the sudden knowledge

that flows along contours

and reveals itself

in cracks along the fractured face of rock

and in the eager shining path of streams

and their cold like gold

against my bare feet.

Later I will surface

and try to capture it with words,

Like that stone underside captures

light ripples from the stream,

like those dragonfly wings shine

bright against the sky.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 19, 2013

Release

I release you

to the greater parent,

the source of your I Am,

the equilibrium that guides you

from the center of the earth,

the inner light that grounds you to the stars.

What you are has always been

so much greater

than any sense of you I tried to manage.

I release me

to the greater parent,

who will not hold me to my failings

but ever lifts me up

with awe inspiring joy —

tosses me, laughing, towards the sky,

catches me, surely,

in arms that know me as their very own —

sends me out on splendid paths to roam,

brings me to an ever wider home.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 18, 2013

Circling the Wagons (a missive to myself)

Come here. Close the door.

Hush. Listen:

If there’s a bad guy in your paradigm,

you’ve already lost.

Comb through the siftings of your mind:

What do you see?

A terrorist? an invasive weed?

A giant evil corporation?

A family member who’s unfair,

who fails to understand?

Come closer. Come deeper in:

There actually is a way to win.

Beyond the achy fog that forms

between your eyes, above your nose,

that drifts down in a drab gray mat

and settles in that sad place 

that affirms it is your starting point —

the place from where you have to rise and rally —

Beyond that place is where we need to go —

Where it is clear —

Where you can take hold of your deep truth

and know:

You don’t need to fight in that battle.

The paradigm that stages any bad guy

is the only bad guy.

You can win.

Your source is infinite,

your being vast.

You live where you are already the master:

nothing to fight,

Just everything true to stand up for.

Nothing to lose,

Just all of your substance to gain.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 17, 2013

Everyone Gets to Come

Don’t be afraid —

Don’t look ahead in dread

of narrowing life choices,

of chances missed.

It doesn’t matter —

for in the plan of days,

Everyone gets to come.

To the grand reception

of our timeless gifts,

to the celebration

of what we’ve always been,

to the home that holds us

splendid and beloved,

Everyone gets to come.

In the great rapture

of interaction in the moment,

in that enchanting weightlessness

where you can’t tell for sure

if the impulse comes from you

or from another

(though it is yours as surely as you feel it)

In the joy of that transporting,

far beyond what you could know to ask for,

Everyone gets to come.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 16, 2013

In Bloom

For that flower to appear,

the conditions must be just right.

It may be that it happens only once — 

Once in a lifetime, once in five hundred years —

If it were left to chance

you might never have seen it.

But you are here

and you have noticed

and perhaps you were the one

whose attentive, open gaze

and ready heart —

what brought you to this place —

are what have lent the air

these right conditions

to let this flower

open here for you.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 15, 2013

Observation

I lie alongside myself —

it feels like two of me,

the me curled in the heart of Mind

and me imagining myself

as one observed.

The identity of the observer

is important —

When I feel that someone loves me,

the observer looks on kindly,

and I can snuggle

inside myself

assured that I belong.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 14, 2013

Designing

It’s a funny thing

that I could so totally inhabit another world

as to make a double exposure

for my eyes:

Though I am driving here

along these roads, against these skies,

I also breathe papaya

and avocado

and sheets of rain arrested in their slide

down a humid landscape,

and cool tile floors offering respite

And if there is a way

to really harness this power,

we’ll be off and away,

making things real,

bringing one or more new worlds

into the light of actual day.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 13, 2013

August

Summer rests light upon my skin

lending ease to all my moments

Soft skies with subtle drama

float above the day

Evening falls mellow

cooling breeze meanders through the house —

A brief time of timelessness

that casts its blessing

along the season’s sloping curve towards fall.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 11, 2013

Butterflies

(notes on the second summer five-women gathering)

Let us melt

into the soft, orgasmic

surrender

where everything that we’ve accumulated —

the triumphs and the woes,

the stories of what’s happened,

the win and lose of what we have become —

dissolve into imaginal potential

for our metamorphosis

into our own.

What we have called a false start

or called a failure,

or called a choice that didn’t do us good,

all serve as food for our unfoldment,

unmarred by scars from anything we’ve done.

Here in this company

we feel our wings expanding

just like our hearts

that hold each other whole —

the selves we own

by seeing them reflected

in kindred eyes that shine the light of Soul.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 10, 2013

Homecoming

We all come around to the same thing —

Some through worship,

some through reckless living,

some through questing,

some through steady working.

At whatever place we put our efforts

We start to break in —

The walls of our illusion start to thin,

so we can glimpse the wideness of our being;

The floor of our confusion fades away

and shows the wondrous depth

to which we reach.

So we focus,

so we understand

the nature of eternal God within,

the sweet imperative of the I AM.

And everyone we thought was so impossibly diverse

We’ll see, now, with the welcome eyes of oneness,

And everyone we thought that we could never comprehend

We’ll see as neighbor, recognize as friend.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 9, 2013

Harvest

I kept walking through spider webs.

Even when I tried not to,

even when I held out my hand against them,

still I would feel the sudden threads across my face,

hear the tick of breaking strands,

feel the sticky tickle in my hair.

As I’d recoil to free myself,

I’d hit another.

Yes, they were busy.

But I still got a free harvest

of sour purple-blue berries

pulled from their red stems.

I boiled them with sugar

to obtain a bright elixir

And I felt rich

and grounded,

at one with the earth

on which I have a right to walk,

on which I belong.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 8, 2013

Other Plans

The world, as it turns out,

is not constructed with words,

not made of plans and cardboard resolutions,

Does not need to be specified,

evaluated, modified,

Nor do you need to make yourself fit in it.

The world has its own logic:

Cleave to it!

It will take you through soft, cool hollows

and up and down along the curving ground,

Sunlight will strike you,

and shifting shade,

and you’ll be enchanted.

You’ll find your hunger sweet

and its fulfillment

more delicious than you ever could prescribe.

You’ll find everything you need,

even the meeting of your need to give.

It isn’t, as it turns out,

something you needed to design

or could have forced to come out differently.

Live in it!

It will take you in its arms

and you’ll be glad,

for it was made with you in mind.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 6, 2013

Let Go

Every child of Life

if free to move

will home unerringly —

some in a direct line,

some with wild and bouncing flailing,

ranging off in many far directions,

needing to stretch out, to try

the whole span of the force —

needing to feel the centering pull

assert itself against their surging motion.

Let them free —

They all will come home,

though you can’t know their course,

and maybe they won’t either.

The law that constitutes them,

the force that animates their core,

the Love that owns them

will guide their way.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 5, 2013

Taproot

The roots of your connection

go down deep —

Like comfrey, they reach into the subsoil,

pulling up the minerals

that rise from ancient bedrock.

Whatever artifice has been applied,

whatever degradation of the soil,

you are equipped

to tap the primal nutrient

and bring it back

into the cycle of life.

Don’t ever think that you can be defeated —

Like comfrey, if they chop you,

you will come back stronger,

by virtue of your simple insistence

on the right of life to thrive,

and of each living thing to manifest

just what it is —

not made for any purpose other than its own

and its essential link to everything.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 4, 2013

Summer Snapshot

It’s spider season

which may not help against aphids.

It’s a time when beauty pushes

against the back side of my eyes,

suggesting tears —

Beauty of guitar sound through the open window,

cloaked enough by outside noise

to only come in snatches

that remind me of the boy inside,

bittersweetly soon to leave for college;

Beauty of slightly drought-stressed flowers

heading towards seed.

It all looks rather wild,

and the yield is less than perfect

but the bees don’t care.

Lazy beauty of summer

leaves me with some scarcely defined longing —

Maybe the plants can understand it more than I,

Maybe the crows know.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 3, 2013

I wish I knew this twenty years ago (but maybe now will do)

I can’t make anyone do anything

and there’s no reason to want to.

I can’t determine someone else’s quality

or what their proper course in life might be.

My best engagement is to watch in awe

and then join in,

my rhythm and my melody in harmony

with what another’s life is singing.

My best course is

to feel how life moves in me

and how it deftly guides my action,

and to be at one

with that bright, liquid essence

that always finds its perfect place.

This is the way I’ll give the blessing

I most need to give;

this is how I’ll find my promised grace.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 2, 2013

Evening

Hard work can make my mind go blank —

a pleasant wordlessness

of well-used muscles,

the satisfying glow of tasks completed.

I took my emptiness

out to the counsel of the cloudy sky

where trees, assembled, 

marked their soft assent

to what the night would bring

The sound sphere was inhabited

by freeway’s roars and passing planes,

gravel turning under wheels of cars,

the parting barking of dogs

before they went indoors,

the final squawk of random birds,

and the quiet chink of wind chimes near the house.

All’s well.

The night will come

and we will sleep

while trees stand guard,

and in my dreams 

or in the early light of morning

may come my words’ return.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 1, 2013