Frost

Early morning frost

alerts each surface

to the coming touch of sun —

All edges glow crisp and white

until the moment of contact

Then they are transfixed, quickened —

Breath rises dancing,

They are dazzled

and they dazzle,

silvered crystals almost audible

against the breath-held sky.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 30, 2014

Marcola, November’s End

The rain holds conversations with itself

and with the wind,

falling down on several metal roofs,

tapering off, then thinking

of something more to say,

The over-full river

occasionally adds a murmur

We eavesdrop for a while

inside our cozy cabin

until lulled toward sleep,

our minds washed with visions

of the beckoning land.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 29, 2014

Struggle

Against manifest mass insanity

There’s no way to struggle,

No way to even begin a vast journey

across football fields,

across big box malls,

across miles and miles

of thickly sprayed synthetic crops

(whole towns decimated, desiccated)

Against the broadcast lies,

There is no mouthpiece big enough

to even formulate the counter-facts —

I’m rendered speechless

by having too much to say

and such a little voice

All I can do

is turn away from the whole story,

All I can do

is learn how to be real,

All I can do

is forge a new truth

from shared vision

and shared breath

and shared time.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 27, 2014

Sands of Change

I will flow into my sensing 

of what is true,

I will not wait for others to go first.

I will pour like sand,

no grain delaying,

with the full commitment

of all my weight,

aware that gravity is here

and my surrender

moves me with calmness

through the changes,

and the weight of others

will be eased

into the leaning

of my willingness

to go down,

to settle

all the way in.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 26, 2014

Fountain

Each day I live

is as dependent 

on my activity

as is a fountain’s form,

whose dancing plumes

are only seen

so long as it keeps flowing

No grand success of yesterday

saves me from today,

no revelation

releases me from this day’s need

for my salvation

I fail, I fail each day

until I seek my source

which, rising up through me

along its natural course

achieves with ease

what I could not, by will or force,

comprising me for now and ever more.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 25, 2014

The First Commandment

You are not held hostage

to the god of blight,

the god of dread and loneliness,

the one who says you are unworthy

When you are set free

There’s one imperative:

Don’t bow down to any law but good

Your goodness

and the blessedness of everything

is the one thing to hold to —

That will make you feel

cozy in the darkness

and golden in the light,

impervious to all incursions

on your inner fire,

inspired by the steadiness

of Life’s care.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 24, 2014

Anatomy of Desire

I want to be astonished,

want to feel

something I couldn’t have expected,

want that awakening

into the sense that I’m

not in control, as I thought,

that some force much larger than me

is shown to have held the reins all along

so that all my assessments dissolve

Not that I crave helplessness

or even being overpowered

for its own sake,

Just that I want to be in awe

For awe impels my growth

into something I only faintly sense,

deeper and older than hope,

some destiny

worthy of my whole soul. 

©Wendy Mulhern

November 23, 2014

Landing

They were tired of living on a set,

Tired of days under electric suns

in houses with cardboard walls

with all their plastic food and friends,

their plastic props, their plastic topics

They found themselves longing for loam

with its uncompromising scent,

and wood fire — how these things

cling to your skin and get inside your dreams —

for true work and true harvest

And ways of moving with the land

that leave little need for words,

and no time to worry at

nit-picky issues of their egos

and their relationships —

Finding their unity and their identities

in concert with the present forces

and today’s insistent needs,

the smell of leaves and rain

and the sweet falling to rest

at day’s end.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 22, 2014

Ribbons

I tried to mend the space

my knife eyes had slashed to ribbons

in their tense sweeping arcs

across the room

I soaked it in the russet soup

that floats behind closed eyes,

gave it permission to dissolve

and then re-form

The traffic ribbon cut,

in torturous red

through my psyche,

slow, intractable. I couldn’t

leave it

I tied a bow around my hopes and plans

and left them, only too aware 

that any conscious effort on my part

to bring them to fruition

would have to fail.

I left them to be met

by some life force

larger and more precise

than my fumbling hands.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 21, 2014

Lyric Body

My lyric body dances on sound,

Skips along the logs at Richmond Beach,

Leans into the lift of wind,

Sings the tunes that rise up in response

This is the flow 

of joy-impelled intent

which moves to celebrate the balances

of all that breathes in concert with the day

and all the ways it touches

and is touched

This is not the mechanism

I was taught was me,

nor yet a chassis I inhabit —

This is the one that flies in dreams

and also here, perhaps,

in the rich euphoria

spanning all my arcs,

connecting me.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 20, 2014

From the Liberation Handbook

We find that people

will heatedly defend

their right to be enslaved,

will boast of how much power

their enslaver has, compared to others,

how thoroughly they make them suffer,

how everyone should rightly

be subject to the same

We find that these

will not take kindly

to suggestions that they could be free

When this occurs,

go softly —

You’ll win no cases arguing against them.

Sit them down. Wash their feet.

Let them feel the gentleness

of your caress.

Let their toes —

just their toes at first —

stretch tender into freedom.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 19, 2014

When We Went Through

We left our masks at the door —

Masks of norms, masks of respectability,

Each mask stamped from one of several molds

So each of us seemed one of many

We left our cloaks at the door —

Cloaks that hid 

our light-charged ascent,

our streaming brilliance,

our quick-electric connecting essence

And we abandoned all our static stories —

Histories that marked our limits,

all the tags, the terms, the titles

all that would excuse, explain

why we were so hemmed in

And all the habits,

all the ways we framed ourselves

(and had been  framed)

all the things we named ourselves

(or how we'd been misnamed)

everything we had condemned,

self-condemnation, too —

We left all that behind

when we went through.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 18, 2014

Dawn

I give thanks

for the layers of dawning,

after dream,

in which the worry lifts, the nagging

sense of needing, somehow,

to confront the problem.

Even quite some time after

I’m well awake, another wave

will wash me — wave of relief —

for there is nothing

I need to do to solve this.

I let myself forget —

It’s easy, really,

as the dimensions of the day

crowd out the linear projections

that scratched at my perception

through the night.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 17, 2014

The Myth of Money

We’ve all spent many weary years

playing “mother may I” to the myth of money.

It’s time to stop.

Who puts a value on our life force?

On our creative impulses and actions?

Who puts a value on our love,

or on our skill, our care, our rapt attention?

Who says we have no value

except what we can monetize?

Each one of us is infinite,

Each has the power to bless,

Each one is worthy of the things we need

to keep us satisfied and well

We have the power

to draw our own true web

to join us hand in hand across the earth.

We don’t need money systems to sustain us,

for that which gives us life

gives us our worth.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 16, 2014

Holding Out

Let me not be fooled

by false happiness,

the narrow sense of sort-of comfort,

the condition-based, conditioned state

wherein, I’m told, I should be satisfied

considering how horrid things could be

Let me not be duped to think

I could be happy

while others suffered,

or could, somehow, deserve

a better life than others

Let me hold out for truth,

wherein the whole huge scam

of merit, fate, sin, reward and punishment

is annulled,

and we all shine forth

in primal innocence,

in native joy.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 15, 2014

For Now

I have restrained myself

from noticing too often

how close this day lies

to the one last year,

how instant the return has been

to this place in the cycle

Fall to fall, time of fruition

to the last one, things accomplished,

things which, though they’ve gone through convolutions,

and many permutations,

seem uncannily the same

I try not to mention how surprised I am

how fast the moon wanes, then is full again,

or note the blip of weekends,

one quick tick after another —

like second hands, they sweep around

As for moments, they seem mostly full

and mostly singular. They don’t roll by

as rapidly as years. That’s why I try

to keep my focus here.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 13, 2014

The True Image

The true image rises

maybe not because of all my efforts

but perhaps somehow related

to my attention

The true image rises

in the stillness that exists

within each moment,

where the ripples quiet

and the reflection clears

You shine it forth

to my astonishment —

This is just what I would have asked for

if I had known to

This is nothing of my invention,

nothing I could have fashioned —

This is the true image,

This is you.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 13, 2014

Vessel by Jennifer McCurdy

Photo by Julius Friedman

Cold Snap

The urge for hibernation,

held, till now, at bay

by so many color saturated

delightful days

receives a strong inducement

from the sudden cold —

seeping through the weave of clothing,

tightening my skin —

and the soft contrast

of the heated house,

and the early dark outside

Why not succumb

to the rumbling and rolling

sweeping world of dream

as folded and layered as covers

above sleep’s turnings,

wild as any autumn cold snap,

enticing as the blankets' cave

of inner warmth.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 12, 2014

Lean

Give me the energy

of the steep lean,

enough of an angle

that we feel supported by each other,

held up, creating in our leaning

a deep rest

Give me the weight

of a strong spin —

enough of us committed

that our gravity

will grant acceleration

and the swift exhilaration

of the way it feels

to be pulled continually in

We might think it's enough

to walk through our days

shoulder to shoulder,

a light rub reassuring us

of each other’s presence,

But sometimes we also need

the nourishment of leaning

into the strength that rises on its own

from the bond between us.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 10, 2014