Day's Report

1.
Some trees will be happy
with what I've done,
some may be already dead -
things I do in time, or not in time,
things I don't do enough, or do too much,
maybe one or two things just right

2.
I started thinking about my dreams,
how even keeled they are,
while full of travel and new places
and old places and the things I'm doing,
and I thought, it's good to be even keeled,
but why not happy? Why not filled with joy, exultant?
Or why not deeply moved, or filled with haunting music?

3.
The swallows chatter outside, excited about their nest.
We are excited, too, eager to see their new family emerging.
The late sun sifts across the field.
There's a sock in my lap.
No conclusion.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 31, 2020

Rain and Fire

A day of rain and fire,
tending trees and tending hearth,
learning of needs, and learning of power,
and the long journey
in which one can clasp the hand of the other
if briefly, as promise of a partnership further on

It is a day to see the field of daisies as a forest,
immeasurably long to trek through
yet coming to the end
sooner than I might think.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 30, 2020

photo by Edward Mulhern

Unpredictable

The days spiral into summer
despite my feeling
that the spring is unwound,
that we're done with cycles,
now catapulting off in some unknown direction,
no longer able
to predict anything

Yet I already can feel
the rolling into fall, feel the prick
of cool upon my skin, the smell
of turning leaves

I just don't know in what way
we'll be there with them,
whether we'll be able to pull our feet
into the capsule and shut the door
so as to be along for the ride.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 29, 2020

Trust

The One you can trust
has always been here -
you've seen it in lights
that glow, that flicker,
that sparkle, that shine,
you've felt it in moments
when you could suddenly tell
exactly where your heart is

You have caught at it
like fishing for the moon in a lake,
you have held it
like a sunbeam across the floor
you have sensed it,
but maybe haven't known
that the clasp that holds it right to you
is trust

Learn to trust in little ways
or give yourself to it fully,
and feel its unmistakable embrace,
and feel its unimaginable grace.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 28, 2020

Processing

You stumble up through the regret
of what you thought, of what you said,
not helped at all by reasons
you were maybe right in what you did

The pain seeps through,
and not just from this one,
but many instances, from near to distant past,
where you had this same wound,
where you are porous

And you need some sweet submergence
where every hole is filled
with some kind of healing substance
so you feel re-strengthened, solid

And can stand, feel your integrity contiguous
to toes, to core,
so you feel sure
that what you see and say and do is sound,
and can soar while still connected to your ground.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 27, 2020

A Large Place

In the place where everyone is alone,
alone with their breath,
alone with their struggles

In the place where you are alone,
regardless of site,
regardless of others

In the place where no one can come
because it's the innermost depth
of your thoughts

There is a truth that still companions you,
that only needs the space it has
to open out infinity, deliver you into the large place
where you can breathe free and see clear
and fill the purpose your heart is hoping for.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 26, 2020

Love Life?

Can love be a choice?
Here I am, living my life every day -
Can I choose to love it?
Certainly the calls of birds
elicit a response of joy,
as can the feeling that the day's just right
for plants to grow. And the exquisite mouths
of wild iris before they unfurl,
and laughter, and the kindness
I can find in eyes

These things show me my love of life
before I even make a choice,
so if I choose it consciously,
what then?

©Wendy Mulhern
May 25, 2020

Evening

I sit waiting for what the evening will tell me.
It speaks in the voice of little birds,
songs and hopes so much larger
than their frames,
It speaks in the voice of frogs
and in the cooling breeze

If I don't understand its language,
maybe I will later
as threads come together,
as things grow to intertwine.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 24, 2020

Reminder

You haven't been asked to be virtuous.
You haven't been asked to be a good girl.
You haven't even been asked to persevere against long odds

You've only been asked one thing.
You've been asked to love.
Love with heart and soul and mind,
submerge yourself there,
lose your self there,
and let the nature of Love itself
be the you that unfolds
throughout the course of every day.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 22, 2020

Bright and Dark

Our days are marked
by bright and dark,
just like this weather
that blows through repeatedly,
tipping the trees and pummeling the ground,
then giving way to steamy sunshine
through which the fox trots alert
and turkeys roam in gaggles

I seek to be as unmoved as the landscape
when the rain and sun rolls through,
I seek to feel the shine of bright and dark
all the way to my core.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 21, 2020

Ridiculous Love

The line between ridiculous and lovable
may shift, suddenly,
surprising the beholder
with unexpected feelings

Good thing that lovable
has deeper saturation -
once you have seen that way,
you're unlikely to go back,

©Wendy Mulhern
May 20, 2020

You, First

This is you. You meet yourself
before you step into the morning,
before the flood
of all the to dos,
and should have dones,
before you square your shoulders
to face the day

This is you even before the ever hopeful
sense of yourself
gets up again
to see if things will go your way,
before the wistful sense
puts on its cloak of competence,
acceptability, arranges its opinions
and steps out into the fray

This is you before you win,
before you lose,
before you look in the mirror
or open your mouth.
This is you. You have your back.
You never need to step down
from your true essence
and your strength is plenty
to hold up the world.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 19, 2020

This Day

Now that I'm sure
all contests are over
(no one to tally my merits,
not even me)
What do I have but this day
and its sounds?

Trees dripping from recent rain,
blackbirds at the pond,
towhees and turkeys,
sparrows and mourning doves,
others whose names I don't know

What do I have but this day
and its learnings, steps on the ground
through the rain loosened mud,
things we will build, and things that will wash away,
What do I have but this day?

©Wendy Mulhern
May 18, 2020

Lesson

This slow lesson
I seem to have to learn
so many times -
should be a simple thing,
and so it is, extremely so -
the lesson of the One

No being right for me
if it's a wrong for someone else,
no inner constructs
dividing me from others,
no chambers in my house
kept dark by unkind thoughts,
nothing in myself that I deny

One truth to hold my threads together
One light to shine all the way through
One law to clarify all my perceptions
till I'm transparent, till I'm shone anew.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 16, 2020

Absolute Value

We learn the value
of things we thought were nothing,
things we thought were torments,
places we thought empty

All these must bow,
they are compelled,
just at their striking point,
to show their truth, release their mystery,
must give place to the law
that only blessing comes,
and only good is given -
the law that turns them upside down,
makes of their threats
windows to heaven.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 14, 2020

May Rains

This is the kind of day the land needs,
drinking the rain, soothed and eager,
catching a different kind of breath
when the rain stops, and sun catches
the bright raindrops on leaves and flowers

As for us, we try to do our outside tasks
between the showers, sometimes successful,
sometimes caught, while our dirt road
swims with red-brown rivulets,
and plants flatten for a moment, till the next,
when we can almost see them growing.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 14, 2020

Every Step

Truth can't be a theory.
It has to be a thing that's here,
that makes itself felt
in the bright coursing of strength
through limbs and loins,
that fills your mind and heart
with clarity, that speaks in the voice
more intimate than your own,
guides your feet in strides
along the high ridges,
shows you your sovereignty,
makes every step your home.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 13, 2020

Frivolity

My world is full of sounds at play -
phrases flit frivolous through my day:

"Pot and matches, pot and matches
go together like a plot that hatches "

(it's a mnemonic,
it's not symphonic,
and it isn't about smoking -
it's for making oatmeal)

With a spoon and a bowl
and a sprinkle of soul
and a knife and a fork
and equations for torque

Through the rain and the sun
with the work never done
but the days ever full of their splendor
and lines that would do well to end here.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 12, 2020

Into Heaven

Unless everyone gets into heaven,
nobody does,
for it wouldn't be heaven
without each of us

It couldn't be heaven
without including
the utter end of condemnation,
that nobody can be a loser,
no one lost, no one left out

And everyone who's been annoyed by me,
and anyone for whom I've felt annoyance -
We'll all be reconciled, we'll be forgiven,
and thus experience
the peace that is the reign of heaven.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 11, 2020

Unseated

How refreshing, how truly inspiring,
how brilliantly illuminating it is
not to sit in the seat of the scornful,
not to have a belittling thought for anyone

Not to be gnawed from within
by a terror of nothingness,
not to claw my way away from there
by setting up a structure upon which to perch
from where to look down on others

How wide the view,
now that the seat is taken down,
leaving so much more room
to see the gift that each one is.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2020

Sounds of Nightfall

At twilight, midst the evening calls
of robins, blackbirds, flickers, other singers,
I hear the turkeys flying up to roost -
the loud clap of their wings, the landing,
which sounds almost like a crash,
the rather muted commentary

I don't see them, but I know their sound,
for other years they've roosted
in trees near us,
and I could watch them settle in,.

After they're quiet, after it's dark,
the geese start up -
many a point to settle
before they call it a night.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 8, 2020

The Way of Heaven

In the way of heaven,
not one of us is judged
for our bumbling efforts
to make our way on earth

And no one is rewarded
for being the high status clown -
each one of us is laughable
in our lowdown or our haughty way

We all are loved -
loved even while laughed at,
loved beyond laughter,
loved to the point of awe, of tears.
It is our disapproval that gets laughed away -
no one is disapproved of here.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 7, 2020

A Grand Dawn

I was jumping up and down
trying to tell everyone,
Look what I've learned!
Look at the truth that changes everything!
I was thinking the most important thing
in my whole life
was finding a way to let people know

And then I realized
the same discovery must dawn
in everyone. In each of them
it must be as precious, as profound,
as earth moving, as it is for me.
No one needs a second hand dawn -
Each one gets their own

And how rich it is to see
this treasure, latent or in full bloom,
hidden or celebrated,
in every person. On the street,
in the grocery store, at their work,
each one promised and given
the holy vision
that means so much,
that means everything.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 6, 2020

Seedlings

Sprouts of possibility
push themselves up
like seedlings where we've planted them -
still so small they're almost imperceptible
but growing sturdier and more apparent

Like with my seeds, I'm not sure if I know
how best to tend them. Like my seeds
I'll trust they'll grow
with a power all their own.
I'll try to keep them warm,
try not to over water,
and let the sun and springtime
bring them home.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 5, 2020

Reframe

Sometimes it seems
a small misstep
can punch me right through the floor -
not into free fall
so much as into hobbled stuckness

One misspeaking
can rip the whole fabric
of our mutual understanding,
leave us hugging at our rags -
efforts to mend it just make deeper tears

There is no hope
but to step back
to where I'm formed anew,
and from there, let my eyes reframe
a truer view.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 3, 2020

End Game

I don't know how this ends,
don't know how we can go back
to being as we were,
don't know, either,
if there's enough of a way forward
to see us through the fire

And I don't want us to pass through
without being transformed -
crucible purified, phoenix transfigured,
rising out of the ashes
with nothing of our former bondage,
chains gone, rags burnt away,
so the shining truth of us
stands clear.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 2, 2020

The Roads of Melancholy

Remembering that the roads of melancholy
are optional, the prompts
nudging me in that direction
really offering no reason
I would want to go there
(hoping I won't notice I have a choice)

Remembering that,
I take a step back -
no need to commit to any path
and especially one that leads
where I don't want to go.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 1, 2020