Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Upward














Peace, child, peace —
There is more to sustain you
along this rugged trail
than in all the idleness
you left behind,

Here’s where the bracing air
sends strength throughout your being,
Here’s where the stretch of limbs
keeps you awake,
Here’s where the challenge and surprise
of each unfolding view
calls forth your fortitude

Your peace is portable —
It can go with you as you walk,
It can embrace 
the pace, the constant changes,
and the deepening of courage
as you, with mounting stamina,
forge your grace.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 30, 2014


Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The Authority of Dandelions














You unfold
Rugged in the sun —
You were not pampered,
You are not celebrated,
But your certainty of presence
is felt
in the confident, bitter tang
of your leaves
and the shiny split curve
of your stem,
and all those seeds you have prepared
in tender softness
for their skyward flight.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 29, 2014


Sunday, April 27, 2014

Divine Approval

















Every toenail, every finger,
every hope, each deep desire,
every tendril of your being
reaching out for lower, higher

Every way you’ve always wished
that you could be received,
Every gift in you
you wanted someone to believe,
All the efforts you have made
to find your tribal home,
All the work you did 
while wishing not to be alone

These things all meet
with heaven-sweet, divine approval —
You are loved
from the deep core of who you are,
You’ve never stepped beyond the glow
of Love’s unceasing care,
So it must glow in you,
and where you go,
it meets you there.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 27, 2014


Saturday, April 26, 2014

A garment

Paused before the mirror,
I watched myself be clothed
by the ever-moving light
filtered through pine boughs
swayed by the wind —
Half-square of window
across my neck, my chest

Fitting reminder
of what I can take with me
and what I can’t,
and what gifts
each moment may bring.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 26, 2014


Timing

The accolade came to her
twenty years late —
making the memories,
buried and filed away,
shift in their places, resettle

It was a strange feeling —
pleasure to hear it
but also an emptiness —
whistle of echoes
down so many changes
(children grown up in that time)

But she felt it was fitting
to hear of it now,
after she’d traveled 
through all those long valleys,
after surrendering so many layers
of thoughts about herself,
In this moment
of owning her power,
pulling it in to herself,
Standing up.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 25, 2014


Thursday, April 24, 2014

To a Brave Cat

Sunny, your spirit
is ever true —
There never was a wound,
no abyss to which your questing heart
could wander,
no way to fall

The unblinking Love
that shines you ever forth
has never ceased
So you remain untouched,
ever renewed
in active peace

And this is your true time,
for you can show your dear soul friend
how you are held,
You can give her courage
and let her know
that she, in all her time
of being here
has always owned her name
and she can see you whole 
and know that she
is ever held the same.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 24, 2014


Wednesday, April 23, 2014

Intention














You’re on the path, she said.
That proves that you will meet your goal
As surely as the bike path goes
along the water, from Oak Bluffs
to Edgartown. You can be certain,
as soon as you have turned that corner
(past the town and the wide green park)
that you will get there

For that’s the strength 
of your intention
and your work will deliver you,
steady as pedals,
sure as the asphalt trail
to where it’s clear
you want to go.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 23, 2014


Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Alternate Realities


















It’s OK
if you need to go
down some long path
where I can scarcely follow
(since, at some point, it branched off
into a different world)
I’ll walk beside you
keeping watch
through the thin screen that divides us
And I’ll still be here
when you return

©Wendy Mulhern

April 22, 2014


Monday, April 21, 2014

A Meditation

You close your eyes
and lean
into the strong broad back
of that which loves you

It’s too delightful, for a time,
for you to sleep —
You pull the warmth
into all the corners
of your being
while the soft fresh air
cools your edges

And it’s so exquisite,
all you want to do
is breathe,
absorb this present
as cats absorb the sun,
feel how alive you are
and how blessed.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 21, 2014


Sunday, April 20, 2014

Memory bramble trail

I need to know you feel OK with me, he says,
I need to know you’re happy with your choice.
Yes, yes, because we’ve come to here, I say,
Where every moment gets new eyes, new voice.

We can pull up memories
but there’s no need
to re-inhabit the old regrets,
No need to replay
the stings of old injustices,
misunderstandings,
ways we were inept

Even through all those awkward years
There shines a beauty,
there shines a joy —
There were great rays of grace,
great leaps of skill,
great bursts of pleasure
that we carry still

So we can walk easily
down the last hill toward home
in the quiet present
of the falling dusk
We can be happy
in who we are,
We can be solid
in our deep trust.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 20, 2014


Saturday, April 19, 2014

Sometimes it’s enough


















Sometimes it’s very clear
that we have what we need
right here, in this house,
with the rain outside
and cherry blossom petals
blowing in the wind
and drifting on the ground

Sometimes it’s a great gift
when sun breaks through towards evening
and we go outside
to walk against the wind
and see the brilliant leaves
in myriad spring greens
against the sky

And small wrens whistle
quiet in the branches of the conifers,
and you go barefoot
so the therapeutic earth
can send its cold connections
up your spine

Sometimes today is enough
to feel the touch of the divine.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 19, 2014


Friday, April 18, 2014

Cycles, Renewal














Day’s end, week’s end,
Projects’ projected end,
Cycles of synchronization —
We come around, begin again,
continuing creation

We graduate, we start anew,
We find new work, we gain new views,
Things come around,
Our roots reach out in darkness
for fertile ground

This day is poised, like swelling waves,
before the crest,
We wait to feel the crashing curl —
this moment’s test

This is the tumble
where we know for sure
that we’re alive,
This is the taste of life that feeds us,
This is how we thrive.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 18, 2014


Thursday, April 17, 2014

Truth
















Should I be surprised at truth?
How silent it is, and how clear,
How irrefutable, once revealed!
How much it changes everything
while showing, at the same time,
that nothing’s ever changed . . . 

I am committed now
and I will seek it,
wait for all that wavers to disperse
while the solid weight of truth
leaves it unmoved
glinting with the infinity
of its depth.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 17, 2014

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

Progress


















Much of the arc
seeks its course in darkness,
following the force of its curve
without seeing 
where or when or if
it will connect —
the imperative of its essence
felt in its presence,
though the full circle
has not been grasped

When it reaches completeness —
touches its own —
and the circuit is closed,
the light is sudden
(This, this is what I am!)
And some things that seemed impossible
can suddenly be done
And the unfathomable
comes brightly clear.
In that moment,
quick as the click of an opening door,
everything changes
and you go through.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 16, 2014


Sunday, April 13, 2014

Morning and Evening

I. Morning

I follow the sounds of your movement —
the wheelbarrow’s melodic trundle,
the slow squeal of the front door;
I feel the track of early sun
through the boughs of Douglas Fir —
the cool, the warm, the cool,
the bright, the more subdued

II. Evening

Now the moon
grows brighter as it rises,
The kettle’s mounting pitch approaches boil,
Piano music warbles on the radio,
The old man sits there — possibly he hears.

And you and I have worked
and we are tired, but satisfied —
The day has held us through its arc
and brought us, whole, to eventide.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 13, 2014

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Side by Side














We walk, we work
Side by side,
We sleep against each other,
We strive, each in our own domain,
for mastery

We tell our dreams
Stride by stride,
Give counsel to each other,
We circle in our separate thoughts
and then come back

What images, he asks,
will fill your poem today?
Will it be light through leaves,
bare feet on grass,
thick chocolate at the bottom
of a paper cup?
Could be, I smile, could be —
Throw them all in,
See what comes up.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 13, 2014


Friday, April 11, 2014

Refining


















When you melt
you slip away
from all those stories —
gravity pulls your essence
in a steady stream
of who you are

You flow away
from what you’ve done,
from what you’ve thought you’ve been,
from all those definitions of yourself
imposed by others and by circumstance

Some of those foreign things
go up in ash, some may remain
but you are here now —
your own cohesion
is your new reality

And you will shine
in such a pure reflective gleam
as you’re refined,
as you come clean.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 12, 2014


Thursday, April 10, 2014

The price













This garden tending
is not a facile thing —
The easy steps
are undermined
by tough complexities:
Slugs decapitate my seedlings,
Cats make them casualties
of their hygiene

I provided, each time,
what I knew seedlings needed —
moisture-holding mulch,
light, smooth soil —
each of which then also brought
these unintended consequences

But I will not give up.
It is required of me
that I learn more and more
until I know enough
to put things into balance,
Which I can only gain
with deep attention.
It is fair that I,
like every living thing
should pay this price for life.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 10, 2014


Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Processes














Well, all this postulation,
all these square-edged pages,
cluttered thought,
have held me, for a time,
in a constricting maze

And I have found my breathing shallow
in the halted place
of waiting
while trying to push time,
regretting,
not able to make amends,
feeling the black ink of belittling stories
run towards my eyes

But all these things must fade
against the call of life,
grow weak against the moist soil,
disintegrate,
be swept away
by the bright deep breathing
of the water cycle,
of earth and sky,
and the clear imprint
of the living day.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 9, 2014

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

again and again and again


















I will dip me in to drink
from the unformed place
I will let myself melt
I will celebrate
approaching empty
in open-handed faith
that brings nothing to the moment
but the readiness
to see the springing up of life
to feel it shooting through me
in recognition
to be the wonder
I couldn’t have imagined
to be born
again and again and again
in the swirling elements
that ever know their own.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 8, 2014


Monday, April 7, 2014

Learning Myself














I will distill this moment,
put it by,
and others like it
till I understand

And I will move in joy like the wind,
Untrammeled by a predetermined form,
I will be in the place I need most,
the place I am most needed —

It will be
a susurrus of tender willow,
the balm of blossom scent, 
a ripple’s laugh,
It will be
the nexus of nourishment
and the incubation place for things to come

I will be that sudden curl
around the chakras
that clasps the anchor 
to what can’t be moved,
and so procures its counterweight,
unfettered freedom

In that day, though I won’t be defined
in any way I’ve ever known,
I’ll know myself most deeply
and be home.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 7, 2014