Second Thoughts

Well, maybe I shouldn’t have

left the meeting early —

Maybe I succumbed

to divisive voices,

allowed myself the story

that my best work

would be what I did alone

When I could have known

the present need

was for my present attention

to everything in my own thought

that was ruffled

by the words of others

My need was to stand guard

against suggestions of polemic,

to find the higher embracing way

where everyone feels at home.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 30, 2015

Heat Bridge

In this heat I find

a slight ache

at the top of my breath

like what’s induced by smog

or chlorine, fixtures of my childhood summers

where laughter bounced in water echoes

around the family pool

and the splashing plunge

brought sweet relief

from heat we watched evaporate

the water we spread thin

along the dark pool edge

while we rested, getting ready

for the next dip

Now I allow myself

the full breath, up and into the ache

because of that feeling’s bridge

to early days.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 29, 2015

Motes of the Moment

I must be tired from leaning forward,

he says. Too much living in the future,

in the plans, in the questions

of how to make everything

come out right

Yes, let’s take a break,

let’s lean into the day, ride for awhile

on the motes of the moment

and the three-caw council of crows

and letting it all go,

even the leaning.

Let the day come to me, he says.

At its own pace.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 28, 2015

A new way to move in the world

I’ve learned my lesson:

I will accept every gift,

whether it’s clothed in joy or sadness,

whether it’s bright or dark

I won’t hold out

for what I think I need,

I won’t require a certain protocol.

I will receive each gift

by diving in to where I find the blessing,

and how I, too, will bless in the receiving

I will let myself be changed

in every way that’s needed

to settle every gift into my heart.

After all, these are not things

that take up space, that need garages

These are soul offerings —

there’s room for all of them,

and they imbue my days with purpose

and with color, form, and depth.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 27, 2015

Living

We abandon the paper cut-outs

and start to work with the real thing:

The dimensions are astonishing —

we could take years just reveling

in these curves, these planes, these hollows

to say nothing of movement

and that amazing contiguity

that remains itself while changing form

minutely and infinitely, the very breathing of it,

let alone the leaps and curls

and then there is the blessed heat,

the contact

and the wind-engendering spins

This has nothing to do

with where we were playing before.

Our hearts race to be here,

we keep waking up, more and more.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 25, 2015

Standard

It doesn’t matter what your demons are.

Demons are not a factor in the work.

It doesn’t matter who has told you

for however long

that you’re not worthy

It doesn’t matter

what your regimens have been,

how you have marshaled all your forces,

whether you succeeded,

how you failed

This one thing

is revealed to you

beneath all that,

for once not requiring of you

any kind of change,

for once not measuring you

against any standard

except yourself,

to which you stand exactly

as you were made to be —

so loved, so celebrated,

so ineffably perfect

at being who you are.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 24, 2015

Simply

This love was always

such a simple thing —

love of your bones, your limbs,

your snuggle, your warm, heavy head

How could I fail so utterly

to know my only duty

was to pass that love still gleaming,

my bone to yours, shiny and smooth,

clear, unequivocal,

holy and pure?

Here is my prayer —

in your presence to see

that this crucial transmission

has always been given,

with joy to perceive

that you’ve always received it,

it never depended on me.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 23, 2015

My Poetry

I wanted to tell you this morning

that each time I write a poem

with you in it,

each time you have shared

what was in my heart,

in my mind,

you are more present

in the landscape of my being,

in the circuit of my thoughts

When you receive my poems

you have received a gift of me

so that I hold you

in gratitude, in inner company —

I keep the thought of you

as treasure,

more for every time

that, through my poetry,

I feel I have been seen.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 22, 2015

Grounded

If you are lost,

if in your story

you are missing

pieces of yourself —

perhaps your peace,

perhaps your groundedness —

if in your story

you are waiting to be saved

Look now, for in this very afternoon

where breezes chase each other

through grasses and daisies,

The ground holds everything.

It holds you as well,

infusing your feet

with all the power you need,

spreading the strength

of the whole earth

into the heart of your presence.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 21, 2015

Glow

Small insects are allowed

as is the busy hum

they make as a collective

Sparrow songs are welcome

as is the breeze, and the smell

of fresh scythed grass

The afternoon had a pause in it

which I only notice

now that the birdsong has resumed,

now that the sifting sun

has softened

and granted golden robes

to green undergrowth

so it glows royal

in the swift procession

towards sunset.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 18, 2015

Mourning Time

I need the blessing

for those that mourn.

I mourn for something nameless

that cries in you

but won’t explain itself

I mourn for the chasm,

for the absent bridge,

I mourn for anything

I might have done or failed to do

to close the gap or span it,

I mourn the self-fulfillment

of a persistent dread

This healing is not

something I can do by sleight of thought.

This healing requires something ancient, timeless‚

the truth about you and me

that existed

before the world was framed,

the love that asserts itself,

flooding out the lie of pain.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 16, 2015

Picking Raspberries

Picking raspberries, I consider

that writing poems is just like this sometimes —

There’s sight involved, but picking

comes down to touch most often —

a gentle grasp that doesn’t bruise the berries,

just firm enough to pull them off,

and knowing to desist if they resist too much,

to wait another day until they ripen

I stoop down to peer beneath the leaves

and spot the hanging red,

then my hand goes in almost blind

to feel if it is ready and to pick it if it is.

Some berries fall apart in my hand,

some years, some are mushy

(but not this crop)

We’ll tend them well to keep them plump

With poems I do the same thing,

with the initial spark, with words,

with images —

I move focused along the canes

and fill my basket.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 15, 2015

Out of the Fray

Things can spring apart,

blocks burst loose and tumble —

there can be rubble,

and all the places

things used to fit

can be obliterated

You can have a sense of

no order, no place

to put anything, no place

to sit down even,

no rest for the insistent

and erratic

loopings of your mind

You can call it

a waste howling wilderness,

and that may be a clue

For everything that matters to you

is held where nothing that can fall apart

will touch it.

Its inviolability is proof

of what’s real,

its presence

what will lead you

all the way out of the fray

and on to sweet abiding peace.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 14, 2015

A Love Poem

I will see you,

I will see your hopes and your desires

I will see your fears

and what will assuage them

I will see your secret boxes

and the treasure glowing through

their breathing walls

They will become transparent —

I will see what’s growing in them

and how, through whatever

old protective thicket,

they find their way out.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 13, 2015

Faith

You scoff at the stories

of how people found God —

I love you and the aliveness

behind your stance, the unwillingness

to be sold salvation by anyone,

to swallow stories

that set things neatly up —

castles made of blocks —

and plant the faithful conveniently

at the top

Some people may be called to faith

as if it were a club, and some, as if it were

network marketing.

You will never believe

what someone else tells you —

The voice inside,

deeper in than where suggestions can be planted,

whispers what you are:

You’ll follow that.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 12, 2015

Light through Leaves

This color of green —

light on leaves, light through leaves,

invokes a happiness

that shows my empathy

Like other living things

they are most beautiful

when they are receiving

that which feeds them,

when they are giving

that for which they were made,

when they are being

what they are designed to be —

drinkers of light,

bringers of sweet energy.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 11, 2015