What We Are

None of us are what I thought we were.

We are not bundles

of incremental striving for self betterment

with random heaps of cluttered failures

making for secret shame

and weighing down our efforts with inertia

We are not defined or saved

by one or two shining streams of virtue

which somehow breached the ruts 

we thought of as ourselves

And we are not the patterns

we unconsciously lay down,

learned from our culture, over and over,

hiding our wounds and our power

What we are

in leaving all of this

is free,

what we are is glory,

what we are is here for us right now —

look how it rises up from the stillness,

look how it brings us home.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 21, 2016