Clean

This is for you, for that time when

the mud seemed to

keep spreading all over you

the more you tried to get it off

(a hand unwittingly bestowing smudges

on your face, your hair, too, now enmired)

When all those hapless efforts to get clean

evidently just made you worse

(the weary resolutions you adopted, to get out

just sank you deeper)

And the rough voice said,

There is guilt, obviously —

there must be payment,

your redemption will, no doubt,

take a long time

(if, indeed, beneath the mud,

there’s anything left to redeem)

You cried, save, or I perish.

You washed yourself in tears,

you huddled, waited

And that, as always,

is when the lifting waters come,

bearing you up, separating

each strand of hair, floating

the dirt away, wrapping you

in weightless warmth

And tender hands 

cradle you, bring you home,

saying, this is my precious child!

and everyone rejoices.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 30, 2016

Shared Vision

Like forms emerging from fog,

a feeling starts to separate

from the narratives,

a commonality 
cognized with surprise,

self-fathoming through glimpses of another

Quick connecting of the dots

until the web’s expanse is stunning

and we feel ourselves

wondrously

held in something 

whose omnipresence

renders dislocation impossible

We each came here alone,

yet, to arrive, we had to come together,

had to see each other, and how we all share

the vastness of this view,

how we have achieved

belonging through reverence.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 29, 2016

Shade Garden

Summer days,

and if you want a shade garden,

if you want refreshing honeysuckle breeze

to float through cedar,

if you want the cooling

of eighty years of standing

through moisture nurtured northwest nights,

come join us — you are welcome

If you want to be lifted

in the bright bubbling release

of knowing you are loved,

and that none of your halting efforts

and unfulfilled resolutions

make any difference —

nothing held over your head —

we are here to love you — you are welcome

And if you want to feel your roots

growing thick and strong 

in the rich, dark humus of home,

curling like toes in cool, damp sand,

kissed by mycelium,

if you want to know your purpose

is established and entwined with many others,

come join us — you belong.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 28, 2016

Still Small Voice

I lay down to sweet sleep.

It surprised me, arrayed, as I was,

against the fierce and ragged monsters

of the night, prepared, as I wasn’t,

(despite my frenzied efforts)

to battle them to the death

I had resigned myself

to creeping failure,

to the dark and desolation

of the coldest hour.

Instead, I woke to morning peacefulness,

the early waking of birds

and the first, pre-color, entrance of the light

Still small voice, so clear, so clarifying,

saved me when I couldn’t save myself —

Bright light to everything,

even departing monsters,

showed me who and where and why I am,

And the sweet direction —

what I’d madly thrashed at in my waking hours —

remains, a shining beacon for my days.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 27, 2016

I Need Some Help

Quick as the asking, help comes —

It comes in myriad little ways

like each plant’s response to spring,

to summer, tendrils and leaves reaching out,

such a multiplicity of enlargement

that my field is overcome with green

So many individual gleams

from one sun. Look up, they say,

that is not you, the one that sits in misery.

You are up here, in elemental joy,

pure purpose, and the naturalness

of things being what they are,

perfect in that incomparable

(and uncompared) unfoldment.

Look up. She is not here. She is risen.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 24, 2016

At Play

We take turns, playing this game —

It’s called “I can’t hold myself up”

We fling ourselves to the center,

to the mercy of the circle,

to the ready arms 

that join to catch us

It’s a good game. It helps us feel

the web of care that gives us all our power,

the substance of the arms

that never let us fall,

that hold us, even as we hold each other

When the long arced summer sun

finally recedes to twilight,

sky going blue to sunset to gray,

we’ll leave these grassy fields

and go home for supper

and the lights in which we are sustained.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 23, 2016

What Matters

Life, as it turns out,

is the only thing that matters.

We found out later

that we had gone through years halted,

an arm, perhaps, behind our backs,

some other essential element

not fully activated

We watched our thoughts scrambling

to make it right for ourselves,

to justify our failures or to vindicate,

to seek a truer path

or to decide that it’s too late,

to let the whole conglomerated 

thing we’ve called our lives

keep tumbling along its haphazard course

to whatever inevitable end

the fall line has in store.

But the only thing that matters is Life.

Life that chirps above the traffic’s roar,

that unfolds in holy intricacy

beneath the ground,

that blesses odd moments with swift streaks of delight,

that rests us gently on the pillow of dreams

and rises in us, a constant consciousness,

the tenderness that takes us by surprise,

the love that keeps us opening our eyes.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 23, 2016

Summer Again

So, summer comes —

sweet streaming freedom,

if only for a moment,

the body memory of that release

stretching far into adulthood

infusing the smell of privet

with aching undertones

There will be years for engineering lives,

which still take on a life of their own

and fly along between the lurches

where everything falls down. We pick it up,

we readjust the load.

It now has all those memories,

each long enough to get lost in,

packed in bundles like a year of papers

to take home

to pack in bins

for some later reckoning

while summer sings its magic

through our bones.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 20, 2016

True Love

We build our little tipis, wait for fire,

we love the roar and warmth

and then it dies,

We’re left with ember, ash,

we’re left to ask:

where will we get the wood next time?

We seldom even notice that we haven’t asked

What lights the fire anyway?

And what of us has been consumed,

What has been fed?

What’s the sustaining substance of our joy?

Here is a secret: in our natural state,

we’re lit up not by burning but by being,

No conditions are required,

and we don’t need to wait —

Our love is in our yearning and our seeing

Our love ignites — it doesn’t need to be ignited,

our love is light before a fire is even lighted.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 19, 2016

The Rule of Hearts

Let us not sleep.

Justice comes, not by hoping for it,

not by peaking periodically

from the cynicism we retreated to

last time our hopes were dashed

Justice doesn’t come by waiting for it,

for some last straw to topple

the systems that have ruled us for so long

In this moment, I claim my power.

My heart is humble in this, but still insistent.

It knows that every heart

has always yearned the same,

it knows that yearning 

leads to fulfillment.

This is the rule of hearts, 

and when everything else is silent,

they will be known to be

the only ones that ever sing,

and justice is their harmonizing —

when they join together,

we will win.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 17, 2016

Jail Visit

And if you need to talk for a long time,

I can listen for a long time.

I can follow your face and voice

through the laughter, through all those

reflections and memories, down

to the place of tears, back out again,

if you want to keep talking.

I don’t need to say anything

till you’re really done,

and I can’t know what I’ll say

until we get there.

This is a safe place —

you can surely know

that I will hold you in compassion

through the whole anguished tale,

I will hold steady

and yes, I will pray.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 16, 2016

Standing Guard

What curls into my thought is mine.

It may call itself an imposition,

an annoyance I can’t help but feel,

(given someone else’s words or actions)

a rage, a grief, a clamping up,

a leak that stains and undermines my walls

But everything within my thought is mine

and I can grasp it,

trace it back along the lines of need,

find what’s calling out

and meet it with compassion,

let my love rise up as answer

What comes into my thought is mine —

If I can feel it,

it means that I can also find the truth to heal it.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 15, 2016

It May Rain

Clouds with a purpose

make their way across the hills,

leaning in to their destination,

companionable in their quantity

Tousled daisies tell the news

to each other in little flurries

of excitement,

(I keep taking my jacket off

and putting it on)

It may rain

We may abandon our work, or,

having no excuse, we may continue —

We are working easy today,

our hands not minding

the halting pace of our minds.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 13, 2016

Arc

Arc of the day —

the silvered breath of early morning,

dew-clad ferns and grasses,

the warming climbing sun,

Arc of sounds — rousing calls

of turkeys, ravens,

mourning doves chiming in later,

cicadas at mid day, blackbirds

all day long, tits and finches

at intervals

Arc of the year — grasses

turning green, then pink and purple,

darkening heads, the onset of golden,

arc of their stalks, bending in the wind,

Arc of blooming — iris, ox-eyes, self-heal,

blackberry, roses

Ark of the covenant —

yea, verily —

all these moments are held

in the perfect curve of joy,

graceful bend of honor

and humility,

softly domed

by the arc of sky.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 12, 2016

A Day’s Gifts

These gifts are as prolific

as the plums on our little tree,

which last year bore

five delicious fruits,

and this year has so many

(though still green)

that I am in awe of the generosity

of one so small

These gifts — conversations that yielded

bright streams of satisfaction

at their spontaneity, 

and the ease of connection

and the fact that I didn’t even try —

they came on their own, sweet signs

of Life’s generosity.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 10, 2016