Autumn Night

It’s suddenly the time of year

when the warmth of another

becomes attractive as fire

In the cold night air

The dark glow of you

draws me in. I curl

into the circle of your sleeping heat

Grateful to the bone.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 30, 2014

Processes

It’s OK to go down

all the way to the bottom

of your breath

It’s OK to stay there

for awhile

before the impulse

of the next inhale

These things move naturally —

There is a curve for turning

before the breath rises

and another one

up at the top

No need to panic —

You are not crashing

You will not fall too deep

and not be able

to come out

These systems have

their safe processes

They hold you sure and steady

and will turn you faithfully

when you are ready.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 29, 2014

Everything

If this is really true

it changes everything

If we can always

in every place

meet our need to love,

find the way to harmonize

with anyone or anything that’s present

If today’s amazing flight

was not a miracle

but just the steady working

of a law that’s always been here,

an embrace around our shoulders

gentle as a swing push,

soaring as the moment of release,

Which synchronizes now

with my experience

because I know it’s true,

It changes everything.

What then, can I say about tomorrow?

— Watch and see.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 28, 2014

Certainties

Nothing is less certain

than these constructs

whose markers loom so large

on all our landscapes
as if all meaning were defined
by shopping

Nothing is less certain

than the empire they support

which claims its power

over everything

but has no substance —

nothing true at all

Nothing is more certain

than the hum of life —

its impulse to connect —

and how each contact

multiplies life’s joy

Nothing is more certain

than the fact that life must win

by the simple truth

of being what it is.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 27, 2014

In This Wilderness

Right here, in this wilderness

(mile upon mile of suburbs)

is everything that’s needed

(just as in every wilderness)

Among the observed inhabitants

(cars and flickering TV screens)

Are also bright emitters 

of love, of thoughtful questing,

able to reap bounty with their care

And if I don’t see them,

if I walk away

in efforts to find something

that will nourish me,

It may be hard for me to find it,

For if I’m blind to what’s already here

Why should I think

I’ll see it somewhere else?

©Wendy Mulhern

September 26, 2014

Five Powers of Two

celebrating thirty-two years of marriage

1.

The power to see and love,

listen and hear,

to taste and know,

to touch and heal

2.

The power to laugh,

to rethink, to forgive,

release old hurts, set ourselves free

and live

3.

The power to uphold, support,

provide a safe container

and all the needed energy

to feed life’s aspirations

4.

The power to let go

of any plans and preconceptions,

to let each other grow

along our deepest heart-intentions

5.

The power to embrace a love

so big, it holds the world

and our infinity as well,

and all our joy, unfurled.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 25, 2014

Self knowledge

The gate has many locks

each a conundrum:

How to be unselfish

yet be affirmed,

How to be disciplined

but not constrained,

How to discern

but not condemn,

To be encouraged

but not inflated

And yet, as I behold the grander view

and as my visage brightens in its glow

The gate resolves to shadow,

I go through

and know myself therein

a little more.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 24, 2014

Overcoming

“none might buy or sell, save they that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name”

In this time of

the mark of the beast

we find hope

in the brightening

of simultaneous paths

appearing under our feet

and guiding us in ways

where none of us is marred

by trademarks, brands,

where we can see each other

not as types, but whole,

unique in what propels us

and the arcs of our circles,

unpredicted and surprising

in each moment

of the steady sweet exchange

that fills our souls.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 23, 2014

Into Your Freedom

Hum of the earth,

web of life —

No need to assert yourself,

no need to fight

against relentless chains

You meld into the strength

of all that holds you —

It will affirm you

without your needing to break anything

It folds you in,

you take your place —

It holds you so true,

all that was false about your life

must fade away

So we return,

so we arrive for the first time,

breathing the ever new

ancient

rhythm of all that is.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 21, 2014

photo by Heather Mulhern

Flow

Your clothes don’t matter

in the place where we are all naked

Your habits, your opinions,

your credentials

weigh nothing, when we shed them all

For to bathe in this river

everything but the pure

sweet streaming of you

must be left behind

(or else it will be washed away anyway)

No one wants a piece of you

Nor can you rest on past laurels

Nor need you feel you have no name

to pull the proper recognition

Everyone who dives in 

is borne along the bright current

and the river’s song

sings through us all.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 18, 2014

Point of Departure

Here is the offer

contained in every now:

For this one moment

to slip off of the page

into the sphere

to feel the depth

of all these dimensions

where the old flat knowledge

is entirely irrelevant

as we learn to move

among the wheeling elements

All the former prohibitions

are erased

as we soar and dive and glide

And miser’s calculations are replaced

as we encompass

our immeasurable size.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 17, 2014

The mess we’re in

The heavy school bus groans

and blinks

and rolls

So it begins

(or it continues, for no doubt

it starts at home)

The inculcation of the mess we’re in

The press of lessons telling us again, again

We can’t expect to do the things we want

We’re told we don’t deserve to

and shouldn’t even ask,

We’re told its childish

and it’s selfish

and such hopes are sure to crash

against the real world

and what other people want

So we are severed from ourselves

till we no longer know

our deepest yearnings

and how they tie us

to the order of all things

Then later on we take a quest

to find out what we want,

And when we know it

we are told

we have to find a way

to compromise

to monetize

to pull out some small piece of it

that we can sell

and hope it satisfies

We’ll be so rich

when finally we come to understand

the things we want are keys —

They are the plan

for how we give our gifts,

how we receive

and how we interlock in harmony —

How we all long to serve the whole,

How doing what we want achieves this goal.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 16, 2014

Sustenance

In every wilderness

are rocks that can be struck for water

There is hope beneath the sand

Every living thing attracts

that which desires to bless it —

What it needs is there

and will come through

There is a power in everything

to summon what completes its arc,

There is a power in all of us

to meet what makes us spark,

When fear is banished,

the souls that shine alone

will call forth constellations from the dark.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 14, 2014

We are not prisoners

We are not prisoners

There are no bars upon our days

We are not pawns

and we are not enslaved

No grid constrains us

nor makes us walk its lines

nor forces us, through fear

to leave on lights against the night

We are not prisoners

There are no chains upon our thoughts

We’re not compelled

to think in boxes

No boundaries block us off

from realms we might explore

No lines of inquiry

can be forbidden

We are not prisoners

however fearsome the array

of shadow makers

designed to make us stay

within the lines of pre-established norms

Our deep completeness

still has the final say

and leads us, fearless

out to grander forms.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 13, 2014

Chaff and Wheat

The chaff is not nothing

— nothing is nothing —

It has a history

It has a future

It follows the dispersing energy

along the edge of wind

It lands against a fence

and gives its final nutrients

back to the ground

Or it ignites

in one last sparking,

its light and heat

a parting gift

before it burns to ash

becoming even more diffuse

The wheat is weighty,

concentrated in,

It holds the seed of life

It holds the focused plan

It is prepared for next year’s season

to drink the draft of life and thrive

And those first blades it sends

in vibrant springing green

to take in sun

to make the next year’s seed

will then at season’s end grow dry,

becoming chaff

So goes the cycle

with nothing wasted

Nothing is nothing —

All that has loved

still has a value here,

still has a place.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 12, 2014

Here is my love

Here is my love

that doesn’t cling

that doesn’t slide around its objects

to the dark side

that doesn’t grasp

that doesn’t weigh them down

or take up residence within their forms

as jealousy, possession

Here is my love 

that must stay love

— all light —

illuming and infusing everything

and never changing —

Light as these wing tips

poised on the edge of that taut span

that masters flight,

poised to guide my actions

in the nuance

of the sweet embrace

of all that shimmers

and all that waits to shine.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 11, 2014

Tumble

When you’ve lost your footing

sometimes the only thing to do

is tumble

Some things there’s no way

to put right

no words to reestablish

some former stance

Sometimes you need to let it go

in the turbulence of the roiling waves,

sand suspended, water full of it

turbid and thrashing

until they find their limit and recede

setting everything down smooth

gleaming innocent

along the stretching shore.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 10, 2014

Too Many Hours Alone

I face the void,

I face my cluttered house

(my consciousness, that is)

I wander driftingly

for lack of company

I take myself in hand,

try to straighten up the stories,

pull at some of their recurring loops,

so many of them feeling old —

I don’t believe them anymore

(if I ever did)

These narratives arise from isolation,

they build inside, reverberating

from props I have set up

(characters to populate my constructs)

They become a burden, a distraction,

a show that takes attention

from present interactions

and I think how awkward it would be

if anyone could read my thoughts —

so far removed they are

from the expected present care

But if we all could read each other’s thoughts

I think these ones would dissipate

with all their lame assumptions and their fears

We’d feel the reinforcement 

of acceptance, of approval

And we could walk easy

in the joy

of how light a touch of thought

could send such waves of comfort

to each other.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 9, 2014