Riding the Beast

We’ll keep on holding

the tail of this beast

though it lashes

and the beast bounds through mountains

and low limbs threaten

to wipe us off

We’ll keep on holding,

our arms just barely strong enough —

We’ll brace each other,

our clasp together

strengthening our grasp

We’ll have no time to notice

all the little things that otherwise

might take up our attention

but in some brief moments

as we catch our breath

we may notice

that we’re flying.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 28. 2015

Enchantment

Don’t be afraid

that you might lose

the bars of colored light

that bend so generous

through leaded glass

and now adorn your walls —

bright gems to cheer your day

Don’t be afraid

for cheer comes through

in countless forms —

through mystic fog, in birdsong,

in all the kindness 

that can fill your thoughts

The color bars

are just a token —

they convey a message

but what renders them enchanting

lies within.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 26, 2015

Progression

As we roll down the landscape

like wind-riding clouds

exulting in our stretching

and our shifting

and our effortless progression

through the expansive blue

There’s no need to remember

the shells we left behind —

how rigid they were, and how fragile,

and how essential we somehow

thought they were

No need to consider going back,

for everything we ever were is here —

our substance and our power,

now finally liberated

can take their place

in heaven’s sphere.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 25, 2015

The Work at Hand

What’s required here

is to not be distracted —

The same old hand waves,

of course, will be employed,

and the frantic flashings

of threatened loss

if things should go a certain way.

You’re right to be on edge, we’re told —

The stakes are high

But none of this is true.

The only thing required

is to maintain the steady focus

of what puts us here, of what

maintains our being

The only thing required

is to be quite sure

of our inheritance —

the substance that outweighs the world.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 24, 2015

Talking With the Devil

The devil says,

Here’s some nice good for you —

Where do you want me to put

the bad stuff?

You could put in on those other people,

call them enemies,

or put it in events and call it fate,

I can hide it deep inside you

where you’ll mostly never see it,

you can take it with you everywhere you go

Or I can let you pull it out and wear it like  a badge,

proud that you’re not hiding anything

Then tell the devil:

No, I’m not signing.

My good is mine already

and it doesn’t need your seal,

It doesn’t need the bad you offer

to contain it or define it,

doesn’t need to be legitimized by you

You tell the devil no —

There is no place

in the grand sphere of all my being

for your lies.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 23, 2015

A Place

There is a place for you,

an ever present opening

in the dynamic slipstream

of the now

There is a way for you to enter

and be fully integrated

in the endless flow

of life supporting life

There is a welcoming

whose chords touch every harp string

of your being, sending the chiming

of your life song

rolling out and out along the hills

There is a need for you,

and where you are

the need is met.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 22, 2015

Surrender again

Here I am again

considering infinity

and the swift intake of breath

that meets the deep cold plunge

of surrender

Here I am

releasing my impressions and opinions

and the sense of things

I held so hard as true

Here I am falling

into the sky

where the searing immensity

of what can be healed

shimmers all around.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 21, 2015

Severance

I will pay quickly

I will end my connection

and walk away

I will not be involved

anymore

I have paid dearly

for my blindness, for my

neglect to heed the subtle signs

But the price, perhaps,

is not that bad

Perhaps in this failure to find trust

I have learned to place it

on sounder ground —

Perhaps in this severance

of dubious dependence

I build a firmer trust 

within myself.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 19, 2015

Seeing the Salvation

Stand still, for you won’t need

to fight in this battle. Not this one.

For your perception

will be lifted up. And none of the triggers

will even register

You will see that your work is 

to stand clear in the Allness —

the comprehensive Love that buffers 

each collision course with kindness, 

makes each intersection blessed, 

each impact blessing

You won’t need to fight in this battle.

Stand still, and let your view expand

until you see the circle’s sweet return,

until you hold the whole.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 18, 2015

Spring Comes

It may seem chaotic

but there is one force pulling us all

And the intelligence 

with which we’re all connected

can accommodate

every single need

This grand dance goes on

in every scale of size —

within the galaxies of molecules

and in the tensile tug of stars

And we can feel it

in the way we slide together

and the kinetic transfer

of exhilaration

We can feel it in the stillness

where the interlocking circles

find perfect balance

all along the endless chain of life.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 17, 2015

You’ll Know

Just as a certain breath

brings forth a flute’s sweet tone,

a certain stroke

the crystal bowl’s hum,

just as a harmony locks in

to where it thrills you to the bone,

When you find home

you’ll know.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 16, 2015

Solace and Comfort

Ah, we pin our hopes on each other,

we reach out our hands

as if two bodies in free fall

could hold each other up

We will give solace

and we will receive comfort

but not from here —

Not where we set up the slate of conditions,

the changes required, the needs to be met,

Not in the stories that cast us so poignantly

into the dramas that make people cry

We will give solace

and receive comfort

here in the consciousness

deeper than stories,

where everyone wants the same thing —

A thing whose abundance

is never diminished,

a source whose beneficence 

comforts us all.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 15, 2015

Walking the Land

Other people have loved this land before.

Signs of their presence,

in leaning posts and rusted fence wire

are unmistakable. And in the fact

that this is pasture — grass

must have been mowed last year

But something else calls out —

and echo of my footfalls,

generations old, perhaps,

And how this love that rises

from the land

must have captured others

They must have felt held,

just like this, in the sun, the air,

the solitude

and the quiet endurance

of all things living,

all these things that wait

for our full return.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 14, 2015

Wooden Nickels

A friend remembers, as a child,

she once tried to give a wooden nickel

to a blind girl.

She doesn’t know why she thought

it would be fun to fool her

The blind girl was indignant,

for of course she knew,

as would we all be,

as do we all

And yet it seems so often

we try to give them to each other —

smiles without light behind them,

words without truth,

touch without 

reverberation, overlap of waves,

and the profound fulfillment

of harmonic tones

We’ve been taught to pretend to be fooled

but no one ever really is:

We all sense,

at least a little,

what it is we want,

what we need to give.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 12, 2015

When You Know Who You Are

You get refocused on the inside —

All the vectors realigned,

the causes reconceived,

a subtle but essential shifting

where all your elements

fit better, settle

And in the new-felt points of contact

a surprise thrill —

Enough to power

all the things you suddenly

can see you’re here to do,

enough to light your flare

so others see you

and you see them, too.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 11, 2015

Body of Movement

Consider my body

and how it moves —

the reach and balance points,

the arcs extended

through my spine, my limbs —

consider how it spins

and how it leans and stretches

There is no moment

when it is not made of motion.

Even at its most still,

the counterpoints of rise and fall,

of soft and taut

are what define it

It’s not a mass of matter

waiting to be activated.

It’s not comprised of elements

that might move.

It is the actual movement

as clearly defined by my thought

as the vortex form

is governed by its rippling imperative —

cohesion of the liquid

and the gravity that draws it

and the honored channels

through which it flows

My body is like that —

transparent, wave formed,

kinetic,

whirling through the dance

of present tense.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 11, 2015

photo by Edward Mulhern

Light On The Page

Somewhere in between the printed words

I find myself in the velvet place

where secrets are imparted

as quietly as dew lifting

And the awareness

spreads like color

across sun-brightened fields

and joy —

like the spring trilling

of many tiny birds

So these are the promises

and this is how they are fulfilled —

in the soft silence

of becoming new.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 9, 2015

Life Work

I start to see

my life is more

than finding ways to feel fulfilled,

more than arranging energies,

emotions, thoughts, and movement,

metabolism, focus for my days,

more than finding ways to feel OK

I was made to bear fruit.

My life feels good when,

in essential interaction,

I engage cooperation

with the life around me

and we all thrive

My life is working

when Life’s work

is manifest in me —

The works define

what I’m meant to be.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 8, 2015

Artwork

Reality

sets up like paint —

things are blocked in,

they change,

refinements are added

in color and shadow

and things dimly glimpsed

become clearer,

remote possibilities

suddenly seen

as the way things are

and had to be

(wasn’t it obvious?)

We walk by turns

entranced, bemused, euphoric,

through the colors of becoming

Reality

sets up like paint

beneath the artist’s hand.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 6, 2015