Centers

And if our orbits

grow more elliptical,

swinging out towards wider distances,

it means that, more than ever,

I need your anchored presence —

something to fly back to

with pull that increases

from having been away.

I need us to home in,

for we are centers

for each other,

holding us on course

in our singular path

through the black sky.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 30, 2013

Mental Housekeeping

I.

Well,

I can’t argue

with someone I don’t know,
(as ground shifts beneath me like water)

who clearly wants to set forth

a strong opinion,

and who hasn’t heard me

and doesn’t want to.

Let it go —

There may be common ground

with that person —

Just not here.

II.

No need to identify

with proffered bargains

for something less

than my whole being.

No need to settle for pain,

or for complaint,

or for a muddied, stagnant

view of life.

Right here in this day

are seeds from eons back

waiting for this perfect moment

to spring forth.

III.

When no excuse

can really cover

a stupid oversight,

and nothing in my makeup

can explain it,

and its implications

arraign me in a wrinkle of character

that time won’t smooth,

it’s OK to go back

and ask for a redo.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 29, 2013

Knowing

In the sudden awareness

of any truth,

there is a great stillness —

all looping of thought halted

in the ember-deep burn

that transmutes everything —

new palette, new canvas, new line.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 27, 2013

A Taste

Maybe

we haven’t even yet known

the depth and breadth

of how it feels

to leave the boundary of our skins

and stream in Spirit

We may have a taste of it

from when the spirit sloshes strong

against our insides,

suffusing us with sweetness,

sending tingles out beyond our limbs.

Or when we call each other

through the twinkle of our eye lights,

we can guess how it might be.

For now, perhaps,

that will have to do.

And it is certainly enough

to send me flying,

euphoria pushing up

under my wings.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 25, 2013

True Testimony

I will not argue

against myself anymore.

I will not deny

my power or my desire,

I will not take the side

of death, decline, fatigue.

I am alive,

and Life’s essence

is the one thing I must manifest

in the being of myself —

I must always move as Life moves —

growing, sheltering, blooming,

attracting, rejoicing, communing.

I separate myself

from the internal voices

that try to make me think

I desire inertia.

I am of Life,

and Life supports my being

what it is, what I am.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 25, 2013

Forward

Your arms full of tools,

your face full of sun,

you face the task at hand

armed with resolve.

And what would ever hold you back

except those voices, that can only say

“you don’t want to do that.”

They are as insubstantial as shadows.

Shadows can chill you,

but only when you’re not moving —

their bars can’t hold you in.

How bright the joy

of going forward —

Your movement, not your fears,

thus your defining substance,

your goodness not in theory

but in action,

your life not in the future but in now.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 24, 2013

Today

Joy springs up,

bubbles along its channels,

overflows.

So much goodness in today —

Things that waited many years to surface,

deep in hidden aquifers,

pulled up by gratitude,

sweet from long, cool resting

under rock;

Things that came just now —

the rising to the challenge

of present weather,

the brightness of success in being true.

Joy feeds joy,

as gratitude brings forth the same,

Goodness stays

when circulated day by day.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 22, 2013

Keeping

I will keep

what’s been committed

to my trust —

each precious soul-glimpse,

each secret shared

(or spilled, in the earnest, bumbling

sloshing of a heart,) 

each gift that’s given me

of hard-won ease,

each doubt-enfolded impulse

that fights its way through all those layers

and emerges

in some quick moment I may chance to see —

These are priceless —

I will give them all the honor they deserve.

I will keep them,

I will not forget.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 21, 2013

Principle

There’s nothing esoteric

in the law that governs everything,

no subtle knife edge

to walk on in the dark,

where truth would be delivered

if you could only get it right

(but probably you’ll wander in the fog)

The law that governs everything

is written in the code

of everything that’s governed,

as simple as light,

as ineluctable as grace.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 20, 2013

Recovering

Underneath

the roar of my breathing,

more solid than the many thumps —

my heartbeat and its tributary pulses,

deeper than the image of myself

spread out along the sprawl

of my body,

is where I find my peace.

There is a quiet fire

that doesn’t even flicker

at the perturbation of yawns,

that isn’t damped

by the gathering of fog.

It warms my bones

and sets them secretly aglow

beneath my flesh,

around my silent core

And it will burn

throughout the hours of sleep,

delivering me sound

into the arms of dawn.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 19, 2013

Atomization

Each of them felt alone

but maybe it wasn’t true.

Each felt the others were against them

but maybe it wasn’t true.

Each one felt caught up in a seesaw

where others put them down

out of a need to be the upper one

but maybe it wasn’t true.

Maybe the conflict 

really was a screen between them,

distortions in the filters,

which none of them owned.

Maybe if they felt betrayed,

or framed, or misconstrued

it wasn’t others, but a general fear

that fogged their view.

And maybe any one of them could pause,

Just stop.

Breathe.

Wait.

Long enough to let the dust fall away.

And keep on watching till they glimpsed

the other as a mirror,

shining, multiplying back their light.

It might astonish everyone

and maybe it’s true.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 18, 2013

Your questions

You ask yourself —

What is my place?

Where do I fit?

Am I enough?

How could you have any doubt?

The light that shoots through you

flows into me,

igniting other threads of my connection.

Your hands are made to heal

what you have touched, 

and you have touched me.

Life needs you to do the thing

you wonder if you dare desire,

(you ask if you’re allowed to have such sweetness)

How could you have any doubt?

This is the thing you were made for,

This was made for you.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 17, 2013

Web

Maybe it only takes

holding your hand,

and yours — one on each side —

for the circuit to connect,

and the ancient courage

in which we know all things are possible

will flow forth.

Just so we know

we’re not alone —

So we become formidable

and we will draw our circles

in the streets

and link our threads of knowing

till our web is thick and springy

and can hold us all together,

save us all.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 15, 2013

Discernment

If I can see this fog

then I can see

it isn’t that you’re blurred

and indistinct,

it isn’t that you’re dull and distant.

I can separate

the vibrancy of you

from that illusion.

I can see

there is no need

to find a way to brighten you

or to discard you

due to lack of color.

I can let my understanding

lift my vision

till the fog disperses

and I see you clear.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 14, 2013

Turn

We are called to this place

by something as insistent and elemental

as what causes leaves to turn,

and then to fall,

as what makes dewdrops form

in the cold moments before morning.

There is no question —

When we have filled our lungs

and feel our hearts made ready,

we will sing —

words we never heard before,

a tune we didn’t know

but which will find its tones

in perfect harmony

with everyone who has been called.

We turn alone

but we are many —

uncountable, assembled

to be the new voice pouring forth

in wonder. Changing everything.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 13, 2013

Prickly

No need to engage

with the shrill and brittle

sticklike visage you present,

no need to be taken in

by the rasping preconditions

you establish for connection,

no need to feel grated.

Though these words won’t reach you,

I can tell

this isn’t you —

the image you propose

is not the one you want,

you aren’t enamored

with the harsh and petty rules

that you espouse.

There’s no need for you to be impoverished.

Reflexive words, repeated fast and often,

don’t need to be a substitute for faith.

Nor do you need convincing —

no use in any thoughts I might be baited to express.

You just need time —

quiet time, still time,

calm embracing space

and lots of tenderness.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 12, 2013

Chamber

Let me fill you up

with the hum of you —

the rightness of what you are,

the light-filled, sensitized

receiving substance

that understands everything

Let me be a mirror

sending love

into your resonating chamber

where it picks up

all the richness

of your inner form

Let me hear your timbre,

many-toned and radiant,

subtle and exultant,

sounding out the essence of yourself,

complex, unique, embodied,

clear across the fog

of all we thought we’d never comprehend,

illuminating you and me

and all the strands around us,

sending your strong truth throughout the land.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 11, 2013

Wealth

As wide as this valley spreads

below our feet,

as far as the vista

of these distant mountains,

as deep as the fresh drafts

of this pine and sage scented air

(sweetened by sun, tingling with the coolness

of last night’s stars)

unfolds the scope of us.

We are not small,

we are not poor,

we are not helpless.

Our infinity draws to us

infinite wealth;

our gifts, when given,

multiply.

This worth is plenty

to deliver us

all we can imagine,

everything we desire.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 9, 2013

Compatibility

I am ready to take on faith

your good heart,

your pure soul —

I am sure that the worth

of your talents, your quirks

is inestimable —

critical part of the balance

in which all life spins

So my only other question is: 

What is it like to stand

in the room of you?

How will you hold us,

how will you shelter

those that stand with you?

Do you know

how to hold a hearth,

a warm place of peace?

Or can you make yourself at home in mine?

If so, I’m in.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 8, 2012

Starting over

I want to take us to the place

where we can start over.

No. Better than that —

the place where there’s no race,

and we can give back

all the false starts,

all the mistakes,

all the things we did because

we saw no other way

though we could feel how we betrayed

ourselves and others.

I want us washed

in a great bubble bath,

wrapped in a grand snuggle

where all is forgiven

and we can be seen

miraculously unframed

and be forever true

to what we are.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 7, 2013

Dignity

I have dignity,

he said,

and it was true

and we were glad 

to know he knew.

This navigation

through the floes

of people trying out identities,

the lurches and convergences,

the flowing, the repelling,

calls for vigilance

against submerged projectiles.

It’s good to have a solid grasp

of what of you can bend

and what must stay unmoved.

You have dignity —

It serves you well.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 6, 2013

Afternoon nap

I wake up

to the lazy intersection

of dream and evening noises,

of sleep-infused limbs,

and the slow wheel of reflected headlights,

window-shaped, across the ceiling.

It’s hard to rise

from the compelling coziness

in the place where the threads to the day

have dissolved,

hard to drag myself away

from the sweet tangle

that pulls me languidly

into its spell.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 5, 2013

Flow

There is no stasis

(he said)

in relationships. Everything

is always moving

(Yes, like skin slides against skin

and may find a stopping point,

but then will find another way

to flow, exploring the soft

give of bodies and the many ways

they fit together)

Everything changes. Perspective,

relevance, immediacy, 

brightness, hue, saturation.

But there are constants, too —

the steadiness of pure soul

always being what it is,

shining through.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 4, 2013

By design

Don’t worry.

I won’t lay out my program of bliss

without you. You are in it,

you will always be in it

because your being

brings me such joy.

(And if you want this

to apply to you, it does.)

I can’t imagine

bliss without you there.

The precise hue

of your perspective,

the timbre of your laugh,

the texture of your cuddle

are essential.

Your wisdom balances things,

your needs are needed.

In my vision

you will always have a place.

Wendy Mulhern

November 3, 2013

Walking it out

Things can come clear

in the quiet steps of night

when there is time —

(a pause after a question

may take a block or even two —

the silence stretching taut between the houses

till there’s enough tug

to pull the answer up from underneath)

Things can come clear

in the dark

where a face can be averted

so exposing looks can pass by

undetected

and there is time

to regain composure,

to find the words,

and there’s time to get beyond

reflexive postures.  There’s time

to really hear, and to start over.

There’s time for the warm, quiet

language of hands

clasped through the traversing

of many streets

to make room for everything 

that needs to be spoken.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 2, 2013

What we needed

None of the things we brought with us

were what we needed.

How, after all, could we have predicted

this place, this world?

How could we have known

none of our hard-learned lessons,

our expectations, our opinions,

our conclusions

would have weight?

No matter,

for we still had what we needed.

It was in us

all along.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 1, 2013