Sky Desire

 

This is not quite an attraction
to those that are broken,
not quite attachment
to being broken,
liquid viscous, puddling out

This focus on the dark thick quick
and the way light shines bright
on the slick of black
is not the crux of the thing.
The pull is to go through,
the bubble closing back behind me,
space stretching huge, opening ever out

The desire is to bring back
the essence of sky
and the way to find it lofting out inside,
lifting up the prospects
from where they had been caged,
shining them out,
as sky is always vast,
releasing them into their freedom.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 31, 2022

Evening in the house

 

It's evening, and the things I'd love to do
line up behind the chores,
which briskly assert
their right to go first,
and some of the other things sigh,
thinking they'll fade away again
for who knows how long

Still I am grateful,
for the chores, too, and how
I'm well set up to do them,
and maybe one of the other things
will get the happy surprise
of being tended to -
mending, or reading, or writing  -
I'll sit here by the fire and see what comes
to fill my hands and mind.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 30, 2022

What we are made of

 

Joy is our carbon,
what we pull from air,
what we use to grow our essence,
what we use to make home
and sanctuary,
shelter and support
for all that we hold dear

We pull joy from the air
and give off that which blesses
other life, and, too, ourselves

Everything we've ever made
we've made from joy -
it is our gift, our legacy, our contribution.
Joy's traces will forever show
where we have lived.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 28, 2022

The underpinnings of existence

 

And when I look up from my pages
the evidence is everywhere  -

The psalm of geese
calling and curving
through the foggy frosty morning

The murmur of the fire -
its warming flames
an acclamation of release,
the gratitude to be delivered
into a lighter phase of being

A road into the brightening day,
fog lifting to reveal the opening  -
steps enough to know the way
to place my feet - feet flexing
in anticipation, journey awaiting.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 27, 2022

Recording of book event

 For your viewing and listening pleasure (I hope) here's a link to the recording of my recent book event:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4btxcylumWo&ab_channel=ThirdPlaceBooksEvents

Rest

 

I settle into my sleepiness
like it's a soft chair
that sends rest up through me,
growing like fast vines
to form a cradling network

There is so much more to do,
but I've fallen, gratefully,
into the willingness to let it go another day,
to let the wave of eagerness
catch up to me again
so I can ride it
through the next phase of my work.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 25, 2022

Colors

 

The eye can gaze on beauty,
on the dance and glance of color  -
how one settles into another,
how the conversation of contrast
and family membership
can keep one entranced

Well, me in particular  -
I keep delighting in the colors,
how enchantingly they blend
and set each other off,
and catch reflections of each other
in their sheen. They sing to me
as if I had chosen them,
as if I had planned this all out.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 24, 2022

Small green shoot

 

I summon words to talk about

the place where words have crashed,
where I abandoned them
(a wing wrenched off, the fuselage burnt out)
and the entire arena (every place constructed
for the words to play)
now proven contrary to natural law

I summon words to hunt for hope,
and notice hope, in fact, springs eager
from the massive failure of what crashed

Everyone is so thirsty
for the sight of that small green shoot
and the taste of the water offered
in the place without words, without judgment,
where everything starts over with the truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 22, 2022

Walk Out

 

When you find yourself alive
you still have to walk out

Once you've seen the overwhelming light
(not blinding, since it comes up
all around you, since it glows
through you and everything you see)

Once you've seen the light,
you still have to walk out

You have to go step by step
over the terrain of everything you've thought,
everything you've walked on
while not noticing its structure

You have to walk out learning
that every dogged step
can be reframed,
must be reformed,
must be transmuted by the light you glimpsed
first once, but then again
in every step that pulls light from the ground,
that grounds you in the solidness of being,
that makes real for you
the holy ground that bears you up

The light is there for you,
and still the journey's yours  -
you are alive and so
you have to walk out.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 20, 2022

Pond

 

Think of me as a pond.
A day leaps up like a fish
and flops back down. Emotions
ripple out to the edge
and settle smooth .
Within each day, moments of ruffle,
moments of calm. Space to be plumbed,
space to be inscrutable. Plenty of time
for reflection, plenty of depth
borrowed from the sky.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 19, 2022

Packing

 

Jewelry, small containers,
knick-knackeroo  -
we're getting down to the small stuff
and we're so far from through

I wonder, will we ever
open this  box again?
Will we ever want to use these things,
and if so, when?

These tracks, the leavings
of the course of our lives  -
perhaps that's all they are
and we could leave them behind
like footsteps in the sand
to simply disappear -
Why should it matter what becomes of them,
why give them all this care?
And yet I keep on packing up the boxes

And I think: if I don't free myself
then something else will -
this is something that I know for sure is true,
but this picture of my daughter in the frame she made -
that's coming with us,
and this other stuff will, too.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 18, 2022

Three of swords

 

It's no surprise to me actually
that my life look like this
from the outside,
such that a card could call it.
It has been my inside secret,
it has been my cross,
it has been the nature of my search
these past years,
my solitary travel

And why should I not expect
it to continue
till I reach its end,
till I learn what meets it,
what heals its wounds?

©Wendy Mulhern
January 16, 2022

Rapid Eye Movement

 

When I woke from my nap,
words kept darting around
like rapid eye movement,
stitching images together  -
sense from nonsense, or vice versa

I had closed my eyes for just five minutes
but suddenly it was ten thirty
and I had no reason
to be up anymore
except to catch some fleeting words
and put them on a page.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 15, 2022

Walking it out

 

We walk around the neighborhood,
looping back around the streets like scribbles,
talking out the tangles, winding free
another layer

There is much to do, many miles
to unwalk, reclaim, release  -
we will take it in stages,
come out again for another loop,
trace the path till everything comes clear.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 14, 2022

City Interlude

 

Truth is, I already miss the soil
and the sound of frogs
and walking on the land,
but as we walked the night suburban streets,
quiet, between the glowing houses,
the hwyl we're learning still came through our feet,
still showed the way to walk in native power

We still walk in time
but maybe less so
as we are borne, as we become
the flowing stream,
the stories leave much less of an impression
while we're living at the center of our being

Truth is, just like the river,
we're flowing ever on towards home,
and everything we're given
will find a way to come along.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 13, 2022

Paying Up

 

When you have to pay everything,
there's no more counting cost,
no need, as there is no withholding

When you have to pay everything
because the cost is exactly
the whole of you,
you step across a threshold
to infinity

The things in daily life can't tell you,
on their own, but somehow
you will come to know
you can't be bought or sold,
can't make a bargain of yourself,
and can't be dolled,
and paying everything may be the price
for knowing that you always have been whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 12, 2022

Knowing Stuff

 

Sometimes an image comes
in the colors you see
when your eyes close  -
the purples where the lights were,
the glinting nets of dark green

Sometimes an image comes
while you're looking at something
like.rain from the roof edge
dripping, bouncing its drops
into a hole it has made in the earth

And you're looking at that
and thinking of depth,
and the infinite care
of the Life that will stay with you
throughout the gravest of stages -
whatever can show you - and you alone -
so you will see it, how it is still there

And will make sure
you come to know it
in the fully satisfying way
that it knows you.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 11, 2022

Tendrils

 

A persuasion as delicate as

the scent of spring - the subtle catch
it has, on my hope, my longing -
would certainly be the thing
to lead with, the thing that would encourage you
to look up, look away
from rutted tracks, unthinking expectations

And see soft tendrils greening,
showing, by their reaching,
the existence of something we can't see
but which they know is there
by the way the force within them
sends them hopeful and confident
to their source of nourishment  and strength.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 10, 2022

Flood Tide

 

We move in and out of noticing
while the elements of the day
move from grace to grace,
sun touched trees suddenly
dripping in beauty, flocks of birds
landing and flying, singing and calling,
frogs incongruous as January spring

In and out of dream, emotion, memory,
we move in waves - our day is braided
with these and what we observe  -
sometimes they blot each other out
but sometimes they swell together,
their chorus sending us over some edge
where we float like a feather on flood tide.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 8, 2022

Path

 

The way can suddenly come clear,
a path unfolding like a sash
in your mind, all the terrain
that had just been jumbled shapes
laying itself down on either side,
springing up to define
the full dimension

You can know what it is you need to say,
and what it is that makes your life make sense,
you can place your steps with confidence
and watch particulars
fall in line

This is here for the asking,
and for the willingness to let go
of all your clamped conceptions.
This is here for you, for you are forged
of that same light
by which you see.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 7, 2022

Standing Wave

 

Turns out it's not too much to ask
to be formed anew each day,
to let all my being be the fountain
of the surge of my source, all of it
determined by its power, its essence,
its choice, moment by moment

All my artifice washes away
in the first rush. I try to be tender
in teaching myself to let go
of what my fists are holding,
to let the cleansing stream
course through my fingers
and not hold anything but the experience
of the standing wave of me.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 6, 2021

Life told me

 

Life told me
there's nothing I need
to prove to anyone,
Life told me
there's no way it can lose

What I may see as precipice,
as last chance, as desperate race,
it sees as gentle presence,
all the time in the world
and no time at all -
time for its sweet lesson,
taking us each by the hand,
inducting us into the secret
of its being all that is.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 4, 2022

Not so fast ...

 

The evening wind
sang sweet songs of spring,
its scent intoxicating,
its warmth causing the snow
to sink on in to the earth

But the morning rain
(which began hours before
what would have been dawn,
were it not for the soggy gloom)
was a dark reminder
that there's still a long slog
before the winter lifts,
and we'll have to dig deeper
to find what carries us
through the low passage
and upward and out.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2022

Daily

 

I'm learning not to pine for
the big enlightenment,
the grand moment
when all illusion is stripped away

Instead I practice gratitude
for each new place
where I can be struck with love,
each small blindness from which
I can be enlightened

For there are so many!
Maybe even enough to last a lifetime  -
daily bursts of waking up
just a little bit,
daily bright joy for my new small glimpses
of infinite Truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 1, 2022