Rising

I never want to think

my time is worth more

than someone else’s,

or that my thoughts are,

or my words

I never want to not have 

time to hear another

In this great work

of waking up

we all must rise together.

All must become awe-striking,

All must be met with wonder,

All be seen.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 31, 2014

Night Daze

Tonight the crickets’ chorus

sets an undulating braid,

The sound of fireworks punches through it —

staccato pops and cracks, keening whistles —

I’m not sure what they’re celebrating.

Tomorrow I go home

I dreamt of writing

in a pre-poem nap

but when I woke up 

it was gone

There’s nothing in my sun-soaked head

but sleep.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 30, 2014

Buoyancy

Love is buoyant —

It is not easily repressed

If undertows pull it beneath

turbulent waves,

If it drifts awhile submerged

in turbid green,

Its natural qualities

will still bear it along

until it surfaces,

salty and lusty,

alive and breathing in

the wonder of the power

in which it swims

and in its steadiness

and its continuance

as it proceeds to change

everything it beholds,

transforming it,

infusing it with light.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 28, 2014

photo by Heather Mulhern

Night Songs

Crickets play the song of stars

their endless, tireless variation

close your eyes

and you still hear them shining

Stars sing in cricket voices

bringing the far away

so gently near

powerful and steadfast

clear as the dark sky

true as the night.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 27, 2014

Prayer

Our Father

Source of the sky, of the horizon,

of every tree and all the circling

patterns of connection,

impulse for the life that hums

in every kind of breathing

(When I see myself as

everything I can perceive, conceive,

then, in every pulse

you are the lift

that flies my desire)

Which art in heaven

Whose essence is the kiss

of bliss, the unimagined

rush of every hope fulfilled,

the peace of perfect, whirring

harmony

Hallowed be thy name . . .

(It takes a long time

to get through the prayer like this —

most of a bike ride —

even when I’m not distracted.

The streaming landscape helps me —

provides the illustration and the inspiration

on earth as it is in heaven).

©Wendy Mulhern

August 26, 2014

You Are Here

I see you in the waves —

your little boy laugh

in the small ones at the surface

light green glinting in translucence

catching merrily and falling back

breath held, bright bubbles rising

as he sinks

ecstatic with luckiness

treasure of the caught gift

weighty in his hand

In the large swells

I see your man strength

dark, rolling

rising at the right time

coming up with deep feeling

moving in the logic

of the present need

folding everything

into its potent flow.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 25, 2014

Arriving

The water pitched and danced

before the clacking ferry

which churned through

unaffected by its heaving,

Light withdrew to shine from distant pinpoints,

Waves tended toward black

And when, around the chop

into the harbor

the boat slowed,

my temples pulsed in echo

of the wind’s pounding

and I was suddenly ravenous

and longed for the yellow kitchen

and its round table

Home loomed up

in the comforting darkness

around the lighted dock

Crickets confirmed

I had arrived.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 23, 2014

Under the Elm

Look up,

or close your eyes —

it doesn't matter

You can breathe this green

through your lips, through your pores

you can feast on light

You can sleep

or keep on looking

here in the presence of infinity,

here in the closeness

of this embrace.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 22, 2014

Late August

The air was poised

in a feather balance

between warm and cool,

shifting one way or the other

with the sun and breeze

And I had to go out

where it could dance

across my skin

and I could take in all the scents —

dried leaves, ripe blackberries,

sprinkler systems, roses and mimosa —

and the longer shadows

and the exhilaration

of this visibly shorter day.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 21, 2014

Solo

Draw a picture for me, I said,

Take me on a mind trip,

tell me how it was for you

He said there wasn’t anything to say,

He grew impatient, for my questions

were so obvious —

Of course he had a backpack,

of course he had no trouble

finding his way

That’s OK. I have my own wilderness.

I have my own T-shirt-with-no-sweatshirt

journey through the mountains

and the cold of night

I have my own clearing

of the shrouded thoughts

I didn’t know I had,

my own exploration

of my power to hold the true sight

of all that brightness

streaming from his being,

all that trippy

flowing of his mind

and all the gifts of rare vision

offered by each singular

reflection of the light.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 20, 2014

Thanks

Yes, we see each other

The signal that I sent across the years

(which, since it met with no response,

I’d left,

continuing to work

because I needed to,

slowly gaining prowess on my own)

Has now come back

at the right time.

Light recognizes light,

Honest dedicated effort

sees the same

And so we start to forge a higher discourse

Where we redeem the purpose of our being

So I say thanks —

Thanks for how you live your life,

thanks for what you see

thanks for the clarity

that frames your thoughts,

thanks for seeing me

Thanks for attention, instead of norms,

Thanks for the dance within the meta-forms.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 19, 2014

Irreplaceable

Of course you’re irreplaceable

for infinite Mind is too interested

in every molecule and moment

not to attend especially to each one

No factory assembly here,

no stamping blocks

insuring uniformity —

Each one arises from the need

within itself,

Each grows within the pattern of its being

Each leans into the call 

to fill its place,

to be the perfect answer

to the perfect questions 

reaching out around it

So of course you’re irreplaceable

but more than in that sense —

it’s also true

There’s no one else

with whom I’m me

the way I am with you.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 18, 2014

Directionality

Can’t live someone else’s life

                                         Spirit, you’ve given me this perfect day

       Mid August, with some leaves already turning

                                You’ve given me these shots of joy

              Red branches in the tops of trees

                        You turn my focus outward

                           Streaks of cloud, streaks of cool

               Give directionality to my light

                          I redefine myself as this flowing

©Wendy Mulhern

August 17, 2014

After Steeping Myself in the Work of Poets of Renown

Well, I may aspire

to something more exotic,

may wish to drift through mist

and leave behind some trace scent,

not quite definable

May wish to leave you feeling

here was something subtle and profound —

It moved me, though I can’t tell

what it is . . .

But at this time, it seems my pattern

is more earthbound —

My words roll and clatter

along the tracks my thoughts made

in oft repeated play

If I try to make them

say something important

They get much worse.

©Wendy Mulhern 

August 15, 2014

The Scope of Us

You and I,

We’re not the tokens

on this game board of dream

that we call life

We’re not the hands

that move the pieces,

We’re not the minds

that move the hands

We are so much more!

We are the whole frame,

the whole sphere,

out to the edge of what we say

our consciousness perceives

We are that presence

and we can govern it —

Not in manipulation 

of all the parts

but in surrendering

to that great harmony

that knows and loves completely,

that moves us all.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 14, 2014

Unsaid

Things go unsaid

in little layers of awkwardness

between the places

where bridges could be stretched

across the chasm of our doubts

Things go unsaid

while we explain —

explain away the need,

in that moment

to be heard and seen

and then it’s gone

And we are left with

all the stories we will forge

of how it didn’t matter anyway

or how it’s better

that we didn’t speak

And so we drift away,

connection lost

in the superficial chatter

that we use to paper over

things that go unsaid.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 13, 2014

Weight

After the rain

while the summer air

still hangs heavy,

some little birds break through its shroud

with happy chattering

A slight aliveness of breeze

brings the scent of

just a little rain —

wet dust, the smell 

at the mouth of garden hoses

The day is still pregnant

and the great unknown

of how the birth will actually occur

stretches its vast belly

over everything.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 12, 2014

Hope Sandwich (on desperation toast)

The grid has shaped us broken —

We find our angled edges only fit

with others who are similarly maimed.

We cry out in our pain and our frustration

and find our cries just shape 

more of the same

We try to think of starting over,

Try to see a way 

to pattern something new,

But all our edges dig into the injured soil,

compact it more, erode it, stir up dust

There is a river,

There is another way,

There still are headlands that are wild.

We need to find those headlands 

in our minds —

That’s where we start,

That’s where we stay

It’s not so much a work of starting over

(These trees are here, they’ve grown for years)

So much as moving now

along our truer channels

thus reinforcing all the good that’s here

But now it’s time to cry —

Cry tears, cry out —

anything to be less stuck, less dry.

With all my voice that’s left, this shout

for help. I can’t do this alone.

 . . . And so to wait, until direction comes.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 11, 2014

On the McKenzie

Morning sings through the river,

Sun penetrates the moving water,

blessing all the river stones beneath it,

Otter swims upstream, osprey wheels above,

Light dances in the ripples

Sun on cedar evokes its perfume,

on apple trees, incites the juice

to flow into the waiting, glowing orbs,

Insects flit about their constant business

thrumming to the morning’s tune.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 9, 2014

Volatility

Perspective changes

like molten lava

flowing out of the middle of itself,

entrancing, ever moving

And almost frantically

we throw our stories

on the shapes,

try to define them,

try to find a narrative

that can explain

how we came to feel

so volatile — hot and liquid and

so rapidly falling

to fill the space before us 

till it’s gone

and we feel set in stone,

for a while,

until the winds of story

start to blow upon our forms

and break them down.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 7, 2014