De-Wimpification

I spent almost a week

like one of those yard ornaments

with no air blowing through it —

flat on the ground, an odd distortion

to its shape

Today I switched the air back on,

sat up, stood, walked with power,

owned my state

…in which condition

I felt much clearer,

less cold, stronger, and able

to face the day and do what’s needed

It’s good to remember

I have this choice —

it’s not my air

but I can turn it on.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 30, 2019

On Falling

You can’t fall

into the darkness

because your being

is made of light

No gravity affects it,

and even if it could fall

it would bring its essence with it,

lighting up the way and pushing darkness

ever farther off

You can’t fall into darkness

but we can release

any dark presumptions that have tried

with jagged scribbled lines

to draw a ragged image 

on your form

We can let them go

and they’ll fall down,

way, way down

where they don’t even have a story,

far away

where they can trouble you no more.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 29, 2019

Following

This is not a process of grand arcs,

though grand arcs inform it,

this is the way light falls

on every mote, on every crumble

of the soil, the way it sifts

between the needles,

falls to earth in chinks among the shadows

I cannot accomplish it

in one great sweep —

I follow it along the moments,

let the light seep

into every patch of thought it can redeem,

understand it now and now and now

ever new again along my path.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 28, 2019

The shapes are not the light

If you brought them all together —

all the moments, from many different lives,

where the dream was broken through

and the light poured in —

You would see many different shapes —

a death, a near death, a psychedelic trip,

the answer to a prayer offered

from the very depths,

a gift of life received, the gratitude invoked —

The shapes are not the light.

Light can come through anything.

And what you do with the dream

after seeing the light

is not trivial. There is guidance

to be found, about how this is done,

guidance, and guides,

along the upward way.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 26, 2019

Needed

All of them needed to know —

needed a way to look up

from their burdened lives,

from their crashed or crushed visions,

the dysphoric drag of suffocating stories,

they needed a better way

to catch a breath

than the scrabbled pushing aside

of some of the worst weights

All of them — the ones thought fortunate

and the ones thought down and out, 

needed something more,

needed this —

the bright assurance

welling from within,

the blessed kinship

with all that’s light and lovely,

the solid truth about their royal being,

never held down,

supplying all their needs.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 25, 2019

Words and Light

If I could tell you

my deepest, newest thoughts,

they would have the same words

that I’ve been saying for years,

the same words others are saying,

no doubt, like me, noticing that

the essence they are trying to convey

does not come through

Words! — they are fickle vessels,

more like light projections

that you can walk in front of

and fill them with your shadow

while the image is reflected

off of you

But light — light can inhabit words,

if briefly, and it can keep shining

in listening’s reflective silence.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 23, 2019

Integral

I was tempted by the mantle

of the good guy —

the evidence compelling,

the accolades attractive

But I considered —

What, then, of the bad guys?

Is there anyone I’m willing

to throw under the bus,

to think of them as scraps

to pull away from my fine cut out

and discard?

No. Let the cloth be whole.

Let there be no one condemned,

no one discarded.

Let the good I am

be one that holds out

for the true picture,

where no one is cut out

and all are welcomed,

where everybody’s place is integral.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 22, 2019

Closure

The prospect of departure

is like wood settling in to the fire,

causing a quickening of flames —

our actions burn warmer

though there is less fuel

to work with

We will do what we can

and leave when we have to.

There is power and comfort

in closure.

We’ll savor the silence

before the next act.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 21, 2019

Bed of Acceptance

At the end of our day,

size of remaining tasks notwithstanding,

we have to acknowledge

what was accomplished —

two vehicles saved

from the ravages of mice

(at least for now)

and some flickers of clarity

rising up in the firelight

as we considered

our past and future course

Now I can hold you

in the love that offers

a bed of acceptance

like coals hold the wood in the fire —

whatever you may think of your life

can be transmuted, offered up as warmth,

rendered translucent in the service

of that which glorifies us all.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 19, 2019

A Vow

Considering a vow of internal silence,

I practice. Let my times proceed

without a narrative, let me take things in

constructing no instructions,

let me see people

without drawing conclusions.

In the ensuing quiet

I may hear

the jokes the ravens tell

across the hills.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 18, 2019

Aha!

(in the aftermath of tepid soup)

It wasn’t the soup at all.

It was the opportunity

(missed that time)

to reassess my disappointment

and what I swallowed

by accepting

that what I needed for my comfort

was heat,

and then in thinking,

when I couldn’t get it,

that all there was for me to do

was settle

It wasn’t that I should have found

some perfect way to ask again —

this was a portal

(missed that time)

to seeing things in terms of life

instead of soup,

being supported by

(thus bearing witness to)

the ever present river

comforting us all.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 17, 2019

Novice

I still am a novice at fire,

as it reminds me, morning and evening,

demanding my humble attentiveness,

first in the building

and then in the watching

what the first flicker will do

I look for the rushing of flames,

the roaring of yellow filling the firebox,

I look for the holes where it falters,

I seek to provide what it needs

As reward, I’m provided

with myriad metaphors

curling and licking,

warming my thought —

fire within takes on a new meaning,

lighting my day with its art.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 15, 2019

Picture

Your being gone

tells me acutely

all this is dream,

all this is dream

I see its edges —

see where the tapestry

meets the loom,

the threads I chose,

how they were woven,

how they have made

what is depicted here

It isn’t sorrow

so much as recognition —

how what I thought and feared

became this picture,

and from this standpoint

my hope is greater

that I will see, sometime,

all that is real.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 14, 2019

In the library parking lot

Children emerge from the library

paired with parents

and two steps out the door

they invariably

break into running or dancing or singing,

bouncing against their parent’s staider gait

like leaves caught by the autumn breeze,

pent up from stillness

now released —

as rich a gift to me

as the tall oak trees,

resplendent red above,

speaking of community,

a place that cares for them.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 13, 2019

Day off, in town

Though I talk about

techniques for survival,

I really mean

ways to maintain joy —

there is a level

where it amounts to the same thing

And it’s easy to find uplift

in the faces of young fathers

and their children,

in reachings out for connection,

in all these things that

right now

are of utmost importance to people,

however fleetingly they catch

the light-elixir that sustains us all.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 12, 2019

Unnamed

With just a couple wrong turns,

I found myself in sorrow,

but sensed that every story

to present itself as cause

must be a lie

I will not grasp at them —

they are not even straws —

their only function

would be to tie me up in knots

It’s better to just let the sorrow

be its color of wet charcoal,

of eyes clamped shut,

the brown green of sobs

providing variegation

Better to walk through long grass

and give some little willows

a second chance to grow

beside the pond,

better to breathe

and look up at the day

and let the darkness be unnamed

and let the light in.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 11, 2019

Dreams will be my friends

I find myself suddenly hungry

for fiction, for magic,

for peppermint mochas

in well-lighted places,

for time to get lost in a book

At the end of my dream

I found myself flying,

flapping huge wings

that started as arms,

down the dirt and gravel road 

through the woods,

back to the cabin

I stayed up late last night

reading and tending the fire

till I was too sleepy to continue.

The sleepiness returned today

before the work was over,

and the book was also calling me

We’ll go home soon,

and dreams will be my friends,

giving me story while they also

give me rest.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 10, 2019

This Wilderness

This wilderness was prepared

especially for me,

like the belly of a fish

but not so dark and slimy

This wilderness

holds me cocooned

in the place that best promotes

my growth. No room to squiggle,

no chance to be distracted,

to opt out. No way to go

but forward, upward

along the tough but bracing trail

This wilderness

leaves no space for complaint,

Its beauty overwhelms me,

its demands

make me strong. I will stay here

for as long as is required.

I will stay until directed to the city.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 9, 2019

Compassion

Everybody’s life

is just ... their life —

the places where they fell,

and where they failed,

the losses of their hopes,

the pooling grief

There’s no comparison of lives —

not one person’s with another’s,

not one person’s, with what it might have been,

no one gets to have

the biggest joy, the deepest grief,

a story more worth telling than another

No one is cursed,

each one is blessed,

and underneath all the questions

is that simple fact,

the place everyone’s life

is trying to get to,

where nothing that happened matters,

and everything that is, does.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 8, 2019

Allowed

There is a place for tears,

there is a place

for turning around three times

and lying down,

there is a place for curling up

and waiting for the inner heave to stop

The comfort rises up around me

like soft flames from the coals,

cradles me, reminds me

this warmth is always at hand

Maybe we’re allowed

to have a soft day sometimes,

to go back to bed, for a while,

in the afternoon,

to do about as much work

as the sun did today,

showing up for about an hour

between fog and day’s end.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 6, 2019

Silver

Today I imagined us silver,

silver and luminous,

growing more so

in the passage of years,

glowing more deeply

with that flowing liquid

that more and more fully

powers our being

This is the way to age —

as a tree ages —

this is the way to grow into ourselves,

dropping, with daily grace,

that which obstructs us,

comprised, more each moment,

of light.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 5, 2019

Going Home

Long we have imagined being done

(not even comprehensively, but with a phase)

Long we have imagined going home.

But there’s a truth about the process

we didn’t know to picture —

how we don’t go back the way we’ve come

We have been honed, we have been humbled,

and the things we’ve learned

are more about perspective points than anything —

not that we know more things

but that our lenses

have somehow shifted everything we see

And being done — I now don’t know

what that would look like,

and going home — I’m not sure

where that is,

but in the learning and the leaning

I can say

I’m more myself than I have ever been.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 4, 2019

Softening

The softness of the day at three

is a fine gift — softness of wind,

warmth from the sun,

a softening of urgency

to get things done,

a sense of progress,

a sense that our release,

while not in sight as yet,

could come some day.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 3, 2019

Unopposed

It’s not a case of truth winning —

truth is unopposed.

The lie may say it’s taking truth on,

the lie may brag about a battle,

but truth is never in a battle —

truth is unopposed

And as for you, your being

is ever, as it’s always been,

of truth. This truth you are

has never had to fight to be itself.

The truth you are

is ever unopposed.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 2, 2019

Be Still

When in the pauses, once again,

the clamor rushes in, the cluttered thoughts

of everything you’re certain

you want, and never want, to be,

the roaring doubts, upon that field,

of where you stand

Be still. Here is a voice that silences

all that clatter. This silence

is like velvet, like infinity.

This silence is the love

that holds both you, and what you thought of

as the other side. 

It renders the winning

and the losing

fully irrelevant —

glows you all like coals

in the same fire.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 1, 2019

The Good You Are

The good you are 

is so much bigger

than the little checkered parcels

that you tried to earn,

the sit still in your seat

do what the teacher says

kind of good

The good you are

is so much bigger

than what you hoped you might achieve

or what you hoped

to be accepted for

Note this: the good you are

could never dim out towards the edge,

could never fail to fill

every niche and corner of your being

The good you are

has no nemesis, no cavity.

It is not part of you — it’s everything —

all of you — clear, whole, free.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 31, 2019