Getting Through

 

Though it's hard to think
how we will make it through the winter,
it's not so hard to deal with every day  -
get up, perform the work at hand,
persevere through darkness
and through cold,
be graced, be blessed,
by glimpses of the light

This is how we'll get through  -
one day into the next,
grand plans dimly in the background,
committed to the way this moment plays.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 30, 2020

Nonetheless

 

It could be a small thing.
It wouldn't have to be something like
the raising of a barn
or a transformation in consciousness

It could be the view across a field
just in one moment,
or the huddle space
where the fire is warm
while the cold air
creeps around my back

It could be a small thing I notice
that shows, nonetheless,
the sweetness of our lives.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 29, 2020

A Story

 

They didn't think they wanted to get up,

absorbed, as they were, in arranging
the little curlicues of what they called their lives

Which always seemed to promise:
Sometime, somehow, they'd get it right
and win the prize of fortune, fame, delight

They thought it was annoying to be prodded,
even unfair, as it perhaps distracted
them off their game, made them miss their win,
plus it was fearsome to be demanded
to be more than they had ever been

And yet, when they finally awoke.
They had no more words to describe.
The things that looked like onerous demands
were simply invitations to arise,
to inhabit the vast regions of their being,
to humbly wield their quintessential power.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 28, 2020

My earnest quest

 

To see, within the chasm,
The dark gleam of depth, of strength,
fine-grained solidity of courage
and compassion

To feel, beneath the raging,
the ocean floor stillness
where everything returns
to sacred rest

The heart, the core, the center  -
what shelters me, what sends me,
what receives me to its own
in every journey,
the place where I can enter
in my very smallest state,
the place where I can stay,
expand, and grow.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 25, 2020

In this place of tears

 

I'm forced to remember
I can't do this alone,
can't toss my thoughts high enough
to scale the peak,
can't get the answer
from random imprints of emotions

I'm forced to remember
answers have nothing for me -
I need the deep suffusing
of what knows me.
I need to give up my projections
and let myself be shown.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 25, 2020

Bring an offering

 

And what would I not offer,
when everything I bring
is caught up so immediately,
transfigured, brightened, multiplied,
illuminating what I am,
revealing and bestowing
my heart's desire  -
When would I not come
to the place of offering  -
What would I want to leave behind?

I will come.
I will remember
it is my natural state
to be full of thanks  -
my breath and nourishment,
cause and purpose for my leaping -
I have been lame so long
but now I'm free.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 24, 2020

Late November, 3:30 pm

 

An hour until sunset,
and the fog returns,
swallowing the hills again,
and then the trees,
just like this morning
before the few hours around noon
when the sky revealed itself
the very definition of blue
and the sun coaxed the temperature
a few degrees above freezing

The fog closes our landscape in,
leaving us here among the rafters
failing to hold up the sky
as darkness falls.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 21, 2020

Poemless

 

The poemless feeling starts as yawns,
then marches on
like a road that leads to
the inside corners of a box,
like a day
that runs out of ticks,
or they grind down
and the next one
simply never comes

It doesn't ask for diagnosis,
just for bed.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 20, 2020

Nothing

 

As I talked about it
I remembered
how the Allness can reveal itself
within the darkest emptiness,
within the fact that even
when you take away everything  -
everything you can think of,
everything you can name,
everything you can imagine,
all you can desire  -
the Allness is still there.

In that presence is everything  -
even what you might call nothing
can't take it away.
It is the Love that stands
when everything is gone.
It is the Love that finally
is all you ever need.

©Wendy Mulhern
November19, 2020

Pack up day

 

It's a series of small tasks -
some have an order,
more than are possible
want to be done last -
we push them along
as well as we can

The hours tick on tiptoe -
we're always surprised
when well after ten
there are still more last things

But we've done it enough
that we move along calmly,
trying to get all the edges pulled in
and early tomorrow
we'll pick ourselves up,
load up the truck and head south.

©Wendy Mulhern
November18, 2020

The Call

 

Well, it would be the same hubris
to say I heard the call
but failed to answer
as to say
that only I was called

as if the calling
were a voice I could refuse,
as if, on hearing it,
there could still be anything else
I might prefer to do

as if there were a me
with any purpose or existence
beside the magnitude
of what I'd understand myself to be,
what I'd embody
in answering the call.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 17, 2020

Try This

 

Try this out, just for a moment -
being satisfied with what you are -
not in contrast to any others,
not in reference to a former self

Inhabit this - and not as an exception -
Have reference only to your present self -
What you are is just what feeds this moment
with the delight that glints through all its folds

This is enough! In fact, it's overflowing -
Let its lightness billow through your form,
let it lift you up and take you flying -
you can come back down
any time you want.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 15, 2020

Belief

 

In the space between
what I think I believe
and what I really,
there is room for falling
and also room for reckoning,
the evidence being clear
in my face and in my actions
and how I move through the day

What I am believing
casts its shadow
across who I think I am
and what is happening to me,
and if I don't like the shadow
I can change it,
but only as I change what casts it

Let me look up,
Let me draw no conclusions
from tricks of the light.
Let me look up
to realign myself
with what is true.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 14, 2020

Source

 

Where do I live?
What ribbons of contiguity
define my thought? How are they affixed?
What winds do they blow in? These stories
of sequenced events, cause and effect -
how much of them do I write myself,
and what inspires me?
What do I copy, what do I notice,
how much attention do I pay
to what I've written down?

These are important questions.
I won't try to answer
before I've asked them fully,
I'll let their unfurling consequences
make it clear,
and I will turn for confirmation
ever back to my creator,
I'll turn for affirmation
to my source.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 13, 2020

Evening

 

Evening can look like rainfall
these shorter days,
falling and falling in front of my eyes,
rain I can see but not feel -
what looks like a socked in sky
may really be sundown
sneaking in behind the clouds

It feels silent
but I can still hear ravens
and the rattle of the ladder
and the hum of distant traffic,
the quiet being, actually,
the day's anticipation of the night,
their brief meeting
soft as the clasp of hands.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 12, 2020

Stepping Up

 

More dangerous to me than hardship
is the vapid satisfaction
that accepts a lie about my being
because it's not that bad,
that accepts a happy that is disempowered,
that lets a picture of a good life
obscure the depth and brilliance
of a life truly lived,
a life whose purpose is
to show the presence of
the good encompassing
the whole of being,
healing and including all the world.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 10, 2020

Kingdom

 

I have seen the kingdom
and it is within - it is the impulse
of my consciousness, the realm
of my desire, my hope, my love,
and that which governs them

I have seen the kingdom
and it is within - it's what insists
on justice, what won't settle
for lies, for privilege,
for ignorant oppression,
for childish blindness
to the things that need to change

I've seen the kingdom
in the hearts of others,
and I recognized the clarity,
the sudden opening -
vast canyons and the breathtaking
settledness, commanding calm,
the wave of certainty that washes doubt away -
kingdom within, in me, in us, as one.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 9, 2020

Weathered

 

The cold sun has weathered me today,
leaving me attracted to fire,
to radiant warmth,
though it washes me
in sandstone red, muting
my thoughts and feelings,
wearing down my words

Sleep will be easy
as the outside cold
sucks the heat out of the cabin
once the fire is gone.
We will stay warm wrapped in blankets
and dream on through the darkness
to the cold dawn.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 8, 2020

Illuminated

 

The light catches us
in moments we didn't pose for,
renders us radiant
in the midst of daily efforts
we thought we were just
trying to get through

But actually it's showing us
what we are -
made of brilliance,
of spontaneous
glory and grace,
just like everything
we share this earth with,
finding home within the power of place.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 7, 2020

Awake

 

I shook myself awake
from where I was wandering
through memories of young adulthood,
ways I thought, and things I said and did

The mood had gotten tedious,
a haze of self-dissatisfaction
slouching in, making it hard to breathe

I didn't ask for this,
didn't give permission for my mind
to fill with toxins, for the mood
to be this semi-dismal color

So I shook myself awake -
I didn't need to dwell there
and my past did not require me
to be paraded back, head hung down

For one could also say
that I was young, and that my ignorance
was not my fault (or not entirely)

And one could say
if I have truly woken up
then all of that was just a story -
none of it can cling to who I am,
and none of it can sully who I was.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 6, 2020

No Pundit

 I will not talk about 

things that are not mine -
what I have not proven
will stand out like sticks
that pontifications
can never clothe

I'll let the colors fall
and let the branches
speak for themselves -
these things I think I ought to know
but don't
still stand out clear
and I will see them
as I keep seeking.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 5, 2020

Working in November

 

That we can work together
through rain,
that we can be cheerful
as puddles form
and gloves get wet
gives me a chortle,
a bright warming,
an inner heat source
to counteract my dampened clothes

We kept on working
while the rain came harder,
and then it stopped, and we continued,
the appreciation that we had
each for the other
as strong a structure as the frame we built.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 3, 2020

Morning Wisps

 

Behind the wisps of sorrow
that came drifting up
from memories released
by an offhand reminder

Behind my being sorry
for being too inept
to offer you the wisdom
that you looked for,
behind the sense
that I had let you down

Comes, like the light that prompts the mist to lift,
to float above the ground before dispersing,
the fact that love was, even then,
the only force impelling me,
the only message I could give
and all that you could really hear

And love, I know, can do no harm,
and nothing I advised,
could interfere with who you are
and how you shine,
could hold you back from coming to your own.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 2, 2020