Heaviness

Ah, what have you shouldered?

— Put it down —

What have you swallowed?

— Spit it out —

At this time of heaviness,

in this time of lies,

In the face of revolution

or worse, suffocation

The one thing that is needed

is not for you to go down

(though the depths cry out, cry out,

though something calling itself conscience

demands your howling)

The one thing that is needed

is for you to demonstrate

(if only to yourself)

the survival move of shrugging off the weight

and letting the afflatus

bear you to the surface,

letting the stillness

radiate,

letting your truth

rise.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 28, 2015

Permeated

Love touches every surface

as eagerly as water seeping

into soil, finding each tiny crevice

and filling it suddenly

Love goes in infinitely small,

embracing every grain of thought,

of being. The intimacy of being known

closer than I ever could imagine,

of knowing something by the way

it touches me

opens me out

like a chestnut frond —

so much unfolding

from one little bud.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 27, 2015

Enemies

We looked around for the enemy

but all we could see

were faces wanting to be loved —

some with glints of longing,

some with aching hope,

some afraid to even

look up and see

No one was standing

with bared teeth

waiting to devour

or in the inscrutable ice

that blandly wields a pen

to steal the lives of millions

Instead we saw the power

that kindles kinship from afar,

that brings each one back

from dim benighted stances

We saw the incredulous

but then willing

dropping of forms,

of roles, of strictures —

we saw the relief,

grateful and repentant

of coming home.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 25, 2015

Teachings

“They shall teach no more every man his neighbor saying ‘know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, saith the Lord.”

We shall not teach

the steps for finding goodness:

try this diet, exercise or meditation,

renounce your ego to become enlightened,

adopt these habits of communication,

release your fears, embrace your shadow

We won’t be offering

all those helpful paths

to fix yourself, to heal your life

to find out who you really are

Because you’ll know.

We all will, from the inside.

We’ll know the bright joy

that springs up within

permeating everything

bringing forth dynamic understanding

opening the infinite dimensions

of what we see we’ve always known we are.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 24, 2015

An Everyday Occurrence

Confronted suddenly

with such fullness

I am left without words —

the place where they were

has gone liquid

and it flows around and permeates

all the pores of my perception

I don’t respond

for I am transfixed

almost clumsily

I lean into the contact

My tongue has assumed the aspect

of infants drinking

I feel the suction

against my soft palate 

It’s time to fly

time to cry or cry out

time to throw my whole being

against or into the vortex

(I don’t know which)

Time for gratitude

for overwhelm, for wonder

for this Life.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 23, 2015

“Goodness and mercy shall follow me”

Goodness and mercy

will be in my wake

in the places I have been

after I’ve gone through

Goodness and mercy

will be the result

of my presence

like flowers blooming in footprints

All the days of my life

So I shall dwell

in the happy certainty

not only of having done no harm

but of blessing

I shall not want

for all my hope

is thus fulfilled.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 22, 2015

Walking to the Jail

My soft-shod feet

fall quietly

along the pavement,

then the gravel, then the curb I balance on

A metal door rolls open to admit

a young athletic cyclist

into a dark spire of glass and steel

that makes its statement

between the water and the freeway

shadowing the scruffy grasses

where homeless people pitch their tents

I walk along the edges of the city,

don’t see many people, though the land

is all but absent underneath the influence

I walk along the edges of the system, too —

not caught up in the hum of jobs and money,

not forced to be here, not incarcerated,

not forced either, to buy in

to all the ways that I could be constricted

I feel a watchfulness around my eyes

but not much commentary. A phrase

flits through my thought:

“so many different flavors of slavery”

but I don’t pursue it

There’s a way I walk through here

where I see something else —

the power inherent in each set of eyes

to melt away all kinds of walls

through the simple and singular truth

of I Am.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 21, 2015

For Susanne

(from our conversation)

We come to discover

(again and again, it seems)

that there is nothing we can gain

by iron will, by lining up

the vectors and the dominoes of force,

by straining, with the tension of our eyebrows

(ache in our eye sockets from sharpness of the focus)

for what we feel is right

We learn that in our present love,

so constantly re-flooded

by new unfolding wonder,

revealings of the bud, the bloom, the leaf,

the smile, the creativity, the insight —

In this response, the love that feeds us

even as we give it,

is all the power to open out the world.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 19, 2015

This Land, This Day

The tawny insects hover and dart,

the swallows flit and dive,

the turkey vulture wheels, light through its wings

showing them golden from beneath

Sparrows chase each other through the brambles

flying low and straight,

a pair of doves coo and flutter

from fence to fence

Blackbird warbles ripple the air like water,

Sparrow trills and whistles magnify the sun,

the wind teaches me to breathe

in the broad generosity

of this land, this day.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 17, 2015

Keening

There is a place for the low wolf howl,

a place for the long keening,

a place for the cry that launches itself

out of tears, after facades have fallen

It can go on as long as it has to —

no need to question the purpose

or the meaning

or if it (really now!) must be enough already

I may be howling for myself

or for the world

or for everything I put up with 

but shouldn’t have,

for all the stands I didn’t take

It is a part of me I didn’t know —

Ancient, loud, flinging its sound out

Sharp enough to echo through the trees.

It frees me, at least a little,

from domestication,

from constrictions on what I’m allowed to be

It can continue as long as it needs to.

Afterwards, the horse comes out of the woods,

the bright flashing fish appear from nowhere.

I may do lucid dreaming

but this — how my creator holds me —

This is more.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 16, 2015

photo by Susanne Weiss

What is Love?

Love is the elemental

impulse of everything,

the kernel of desire

that seeds all life

and brings it forth,

the essence of

the negentropic drive

propelling the development

of all life forms

and the grand dance

of all of them together

Love is all-encompassing permission

for things to be

what they are,

constantly, just where they are

in every now.

Love is the joy

that celebrates each being,

the profound attention

to all the fractal unfoldings

of each entity, the delight

in the harmony of all

Love is the listening,

Love is the witnessing,

Love is the blessing

Love is cause,

Love is motive,

Love is why.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 14, 2015

Under

No answers, please —

no answers from me, anyway.

Let me go down

to that place far underneath the words

where the rich shadows

snuggle like blankets,

soft undulations of somber colors,

and the subtle hammock swing

rocks me to stillness,

weighty as sleep

tugging me deep

to where the silent waters

wait to spring.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 13, 2015

Comfort

This habit of being,

of being together,

of being comfortable in contact,

fitting naturally into the curves and hollows

of each other

provides a wordless nourishment,

a sense of home never achieved

by staid convention 

or polite conversation

Our bones know

this is what we need:

We put our hands together

to feel the shared vibration,

we put our heads together

to hum as one.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 11, 2015

Pottery by Jennifer McCurdy, photo by Gary Mirando

Away

The dandelion seeds

nestle in soft fluff for a day

before they stiffen enough

(though still soft)

to be ready

Then the mother flower reopens

and the air ruffles their fuzz-tops

and they start to realize

in this time

they belong to this air

and they will leave

(impossible as it seemed the day before)

Their contact will loosen —

they will no longer be

part of this unity,

they will be singular

and the wind

will take them away

Not this instant,

not at a predictable time

but inevitably 

they will be borne

into the greater whole.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 10, 2015

Flood Waters

I don’t know why I sat there

and fed myself footage

of tsunamis, and police brutality,

and travesties of justice,

don’t know why I kept watching

when up till then my day had been

so positive

I don’t know why I then got impatient

and wrote a note that brought a bad reaction,

don’t know why I seem to want

to escalate it

I will refrain. I will

take myself to bed. I will

wait until morning. Maybe

by then the flood waters

will have subsided

and I’ll see a clear path.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 9, 2015

The Valley of Shadows

In the shaft of rescuing light, I see

I was not wrong,

need bear no shame,

for letting myself fall into shadow

I’m not expected to prevent

the cold dark spires

from passing over me,

the deepened gloom

from seeping in

It’s been foretold that this would happen

not once but regularly,

for which I am given instruction:

Walk through.

Walk through without fear:

Neither the shadow 

nor the saving light

are your creation

But my feet are mine

and the light within

(though it seem tiny in its distance)

will ever seek its own

and pull me through.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 8, 2015

Confessions

My emotion spreads over the plate

like liquid too thin to hold itself together,

It drips off the edges and streams down

sticky as heated honey

See, I am not dead,

nor am I middle-aged, middle-class stodgy.

I haven’t honeycombed my feelings off

and sealed them tightly where you’ll never see them,

so I can act like I can’t even feel them,

act so dull that I convince myself

See, I ooze, I drip —

but what good does it do me?

How will I clean this all up

and get on with my day?

©Wendy Mulhern

April 7, 2015

Conversation Woes

The game that we call conversation

may move as fast as any kind of ball —

the words may volley back and forth as swiftly

but then the message hangs before it falls

Revealing layers that we may have missed

that make us double back and reconsider

that what we said may not be what we meant

and what we meant may not have been delivered

And where we stand can slide away

and leave us lodged, hapless and ungainly,

between assumption and intention

with something that we’ve said now seen

(too late) as better not to mention

In the end, compassion’s patient comb

must disentangle all the snarls of words

until in understanding we come home,

release the sting of unintended hurt.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 6, 2015

Tactile Dreaming

I woke up on my side.

I was surprised, for in the dream

my arms were stretched out,

air cushion tactile

against my hands and upper arms,

its shifting pressure confirmation

that I was flying,

exhilaration coursing through my core and limbs

while bluff and cove passed swiftly underneath,

such a glad respite

from the sharp stoned path

I woke up languid,

lay there happy, in no hurry,

letting my dream body

have the time

to settle back in.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 5, 2015