Releasing

When I release myself and you

from all opinions about each other,

all conclusions

that cast us static

as if we could exist

in some inert condition,

some set of predilections 

that could be measured

independent of

our hearts’ and minds’ engagement

When I release us

I can tell

This is the sparking we were made for,

This is the ever-new, dynamic

unpredetermined

soul-rush flight we can do

when we are not judged,

when we are free.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 31, 2014

Don’t Touch the Lie

Don’t touch the lie —

It will grab you,

sweep you into its vortex,

get all mixed up with you

like oil contaminating water —

You’ll think it’s the primal objective,

the thing you need to solve,

what should, and must,

take all your time

until it’s conquered

Don’t touch the lie —

It doesn’t own you

and you don’t owe it anything,

and if you simply turn toward truth,

you’ll find yourself as pure

as you have always been,

as free as you had dreamed

but didn’t dare to hope,

as joy-infused as you can sometimes

almost remember

from the time before the lie.

That truth of you is here,

sure as the seasons, sure 

as the cosmos. Which is plenty big

to draw your whole attention

and be your whole fulfillment

without the lie

Don’t touch the lie.

for you don’t need it —

Your truth has always been enough:

Your truth defines you wholly

and can be your guide.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 30, 2014

Chautauqua, Boulder

The temperature shifts quickly with the wind

which now blows dry leaves,

in soft, autumn-scented rustling,

down the street

The leaves that haven’t fallen

soak sun, silent and supple,

butter-smooth against

the china sky

And in between the times

when the industrious homeowner

wields his leaf blower,

It’s quiet, and I hear crickets

When the sun goes down

behind the Flatirons

I’ll seek warmth inside,

Settle, like nestled leaves,

into the evening.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 29, 2014

All is Well

In the dream

the dance was close to flying —

hand in hand catapulting each other up

all the way to the ceiling

In the night I was held

in the deep space of

All is Well

and nothing could impinge

upon my peace

And in the morning

it was still true:

No inky image wants

to remain at dawn —

No one wants to wake up

as the bad guy.

Even the big scary hulks

whose job it is to shout and shout

and make me feel beleaguered

Even they just want to curl up

and be cuddled. There’s no reason anyone

needs to accept a role that doesn’t suit them.

They will all, with great relief

take off their masks

and smile.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 28, 2014

Tired

My mind slumps into silence

numbed by my body’s buzz,

the sluggish rumble following

a day’s hard labor. Thoughts

with lives like sparks

rise and dissipate, their continuity

too fleeting to record. My body

reiterates its day’s movements

much as a dog’s feet twitch in sleep

It’s time for quiet. Time for all that

chatter of the flesh

to cease. Time for sensation

to stretch and decompress

and drift towards dream.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 26, 2014

Choosing Life

If I believe in death

I will see it throughout my life —

Death of friendship, death of love,

death of opportunity, of hope —

It will hang like shrouds across my eyes,

weigh down my face, lodge in my throat

and eat away at each of my endeavors,

sucking out the juice from every promise

If I believe in death

dread will hedge about my days,

purpose will seem hollow, dreams ill-fated

But if I believe in life

I will follow it through all its cycles,

I will feel the living joy

of pressing into the earth, and rising up,

will relish the adventure of each reconfiguration,

revel in the presence of enough

I will know that love, like life,

can never die,

won’t fade with time and distance,

won’t become a lie

If I flow in the abundance of my being,

I’ll keep on loving

and I’ll keep on living.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 25, 2014

Slow Morning

Pale sun streams in

creating its geometry

on walls and floors,

revealing the certainties

and latent possibilities

contained in windows, corners, doors

What may the day hold?

Bird shadow flits across

the window’s sun patch,

Outside, the white pine

rustles slightly

Quiet cycles intersect —

they move along their courses,

most unseen,

Caught in small glimpses

as the sky flirts with drizzle and sun

and I, likewise,

in efforts to work 

and in reverie,

shift between silver and gray.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 24, 2014

Embodiment

In small steps

my body starts to learn

The only thing that holds it back

is fear

Though fear would say

it holds the path of safety

on which, if I walked far enough,

I would arrive,

In fact, that path will never

get me anywhere but dead

and leaving it

I find myself alive

My only body

is me, embodied,

the bold and present evidence

of Spirit’s being —

It is not shackled,

It does not yearn towards death

but bounds forth fresh,

deep joy receiving.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 23, 2014

photo by Heather Mulhern

Contact

Hold me and swing

Let us engage

the elemental forces,

Let us harness

the power of gravity

to catapult ourselves

(slingshot around a planet

and on till morning)

Lean in to me

Let us notice

the power of support

to make us feel strong and included,

to make us feel valued and needed

It’s no great virtue

to walk alone —

It doesn’t tap the half of us,

our grand capacity

to wield the magic of connection,

to launch each other upwards into flight.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 22, 2014

All these things

The size of the arc,

the span of life,

makes no difference

Sparks flittingly ascending,

stars ponderously wheeling

ancient pools, water-carved in rock,

a mushroom chalice

All these things

live equally intensely

through the exclamation of their being

All these things

can take you with them

All they require

is your seeing

©Wendy Mulhern

October 21, 2014

Mortality

Well, dying, after all, is no big deal —

People do it all the time

It is the logical conclusion

of the primal lie

that says you can’t have

that which you most want,

that says you have to suffer,

that says you have to settle,

that says you really don’t deserve

to be the essence of yourself,

which, when realized,

brings unremitting joy

It is the lie that holds us in captivity,

Captivity which always

assigns another tyrant.

keeps us struggling in servitude,

as long as we believe it, 

with bouts of high stakes cat and mouse

played with despair

The slow or sudden pain of this

brings us towards death

(No living thing endures without its freedom)

We will choose to go there too

until the moment we become convinced

the lie has never owned us

And our own truth bears us witness

that life has boundless rounds of joy to give,

That it's our true calling

to be our wild selves fully

and then we know

we shall not die, but live.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 20, 2014

Evening Scene

Crows going home

rise like loosed leaves

between the trees,

lifted as if blown

taking a free ride on the elements,

moving together in clan familiarity

Jovial caws speaking of evening

interrupt the reverie

from time to time,

counteract the sense

of wind being the only force

now that the last sun kiss

has left the sky.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 19, 2014

What you most need

No one can give you

what you most need,

No one can take it away

All of the agonies

trying to gain it,

bargaining for it,

hope and despair,

All of the stories

lamenting the missing it,

All of the sorries, 

good bye, don’t care . . . 

All these will fall away

empty and weightless,

replaced with the clarity

true all along:

What you most need

has always been with you,

steady through all of those doors —

Tell me the riddle

and how you have answered it,

Now that you own what is yours.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 18, 2014

Night In

There is a time of launching

and a time of waiting . . . 

There’s a rhythm here

I need to learn to master

Quiet music and a night in

with the two men of my household

(one reading, one dozing)

may help me ease into release,

the resting, falling segment

of the cycle,

the homeward downhill coast

which takes the gathered energy

and forms it deftly

into what its hopes directed it to be

So I can wait for it,

the effort done,

for gravity will take my work

and bring it home.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 17, 2014

Picture: Articulated Tsunami Vessel on base, by Jennifer McCurdy. Photo by Gary Mirando

At Matthew’s Beach

The day, already splendid,

increased its level of benevolence

with the braided glow

of rippled sun reflections

patterned by gulls and geese

in intersecting circles

and in looping Vs

And with a toddler’s foreign language,

the newness of his speech

the only thing that I could understand

And with the ease of afternoon

that spilled into the evening —

mid-October

and still not cold.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 16, 2014

Morning Rain

In this room with the rain outside,

the quiet rain, the peaceful rain,

In this room with rain outside,

the dark and isolating rain,

I gaze upon the paucity

of my day’s array

No plans for visits

and no compelling projects,

no urgent chores, no pressing obligations,

No reason not to feel the day’s enriching joy,

no easy avenue to find it

This I know:

My life is not comprised of my to-do lists.

This I know too:

Everything that can be present is,

and nothing that’s not present now

can ever be

So though the rain may hold me back

from some pursuits,

The day will still deliver its bright fruits.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 15, 2014

Making Sense

I try to make sense of things,

I weary of mazes,

My mind keeps running them anyway —

What someone might have thought,

What I did and said, and still could say

I let it go

I pick it up again

Must be a cultural chasm

with no good way to understand —

There can be several explanations

all of which make someone wrong,

There must be some way

to put my mind at rest —

I try to gather us,

I try to see us all as blessed

It comes in moments

It comes in images I feel

Where I’m empowered,

Where I can fly with what is real,

Where I can swoop along the shimmers

on the rising face of waves

And I can see the way we can connect

Not in negotiations, expectations,

Not in how our lives should intersect,

Not in what we owe or what we earn

but in the sense of home

to which we all return.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 13, 2014

By Design

We don’t make the sun rise

but it does

We don’t engineer

the seasons’ changing,

And even our internal tides —

our breath and circulation —

don’t depend on our arranging

(Pay attention, oh me of little faith!)

In the splendor of the rolling days,

the mist, the clouds’ drift,

the uplift of leaves driven by wind,

In the gentle hand of sun-warmth

on the dampened land

there should be evidence enough

This life of mine,

more vast than I can comprehend,

is held in order

by a force beyond my own

and all the flights I dream and yearn for

are established

not by my efforts

but by my essence,

not by me

but by the Love that holds us all.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 12, 2014