Quest

 

I venture once again

into the place of silence
where the quest is mine alone,
and much as I might want
to talk about it, it really
has nothing to do with what I think
or what another may advise

It really has nothing to do
with making sense of things,
for I am called to go beyond sense
to where the indelible touch
has left an opening

Having felt it once
I am equipped to notice
every breath of wind across its surface,
I am impelled to meet it
and find the way in.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 27, 2022

Currently

 

I will not settle
for the usual excuses,
I will not retreat
to helplessness

This is not my battle
so I don't need to win it,
but neither will I stand by
to see it lost

The Mind we dwell in
is sovereign  -
it owns our being, it owns our thought,
and it will bear us
on comprehensive currents
so we let go our obtuseness
and are taught.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 26, 2022

Could be

 

The usual calculations
have been made, chess pieces
trotted out, arrayed,
leaders on at least one front
secretly dismayed  -
here we go again

But it could be that many hearts
are ready to see an new thing,
it could be that they're able
to cease to be the pawns.
It could be there's a way
for everyone to be surprised
to see a different, peaceful, way unfold.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 25, 2022

Delineating

 Though there is a way on paper

of drawing light with black lines,
let me not do so with my words

The page of thought is bright
and doesn't  need darkness
to delineate its inspiration

Look - I can have the Mind of Christ!
There is enough need in the world
for the lines of light to touch and heal

That healing truth, showing its presence,
defines light, defines everything.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 21, 2022

Bargain

 

It's not like you get to bargain
with death. If you give it one little wink,
it will have you. It will take you
on its own terms, not on yours

But it's not that death can win.
The enduring multiplicity of life
will keep doing as it always does,
branching out the possibilities.
Put all attention there, and you, too,
will keep on growing.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 24, 2022

Results

 

In this world of shifting shadows
things may be predicted
but nothing is promised. You can be gone
just like that
and what was the point
of everything you strove for?

Which doesn't change my practice
of putting each foot down, doesn't change
my proof-gathering sense
that what is done in love
will have results,
and love will always make sure
to take the steps needed
so the results come.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 23, 2022

Like this

 

This is how you are vindicated,
this is how you are washed clean,
this is how you are lifted

A truth bigger than your arguments,
a goodness with no argument at all,
a love that loved you
before any quid pro quo,
and loves you now
touches down, becoming
everything you ever thought about,
all you ever wanted.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 22, 2022

Seeing light

 

In the brilliance it's hard to see
what's rising up, what's touching down -
and maybe both are occurring  -
you might call it communion,
you might call it illumination  -
how light needs its reflection
to be known.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 20, 2022

Highlights of the day

 

The smooth hardness of the maple wood,
its solidness as I split it,
the songs I played while wielding
the axe and hammer

The little towhee
who flew into the window,
who I set upright and warmed
for a moment with my hand
before it flew off

Enough laughter to fill a face
so full that tears ran out,
time to listen and tell stories,
time to feel at home.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 18, 2022

Stepping outside

 

Almost full moon
rises to a chorus of frogs,
dewdrops on grass
lit up like so many
tiny nightlights,
secret silver
waiting for morning's frost.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 17, 2022

Absolution

 

Let me lay down these strokes of absolution
like paint, colors sinking deep
into the paper, spreading out
at the edges of the lines,
color changing what you thought
had been the story, what you thought
was the starting point,
color saturating you until
you are wholly changed  -
no untouched spaces,
every part rendered brilliant,
none neglected,
none shut out

And whatever amends are called for,
you are now well equipped
to make them, cozied up,
as you are, in the inclusion
of every last corner of you
in the color that's given you,
the love that is yours.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 15 2022

Cringeworthy

 

I guess there's really no need
to be embarrassed by my former self,
to cringe at all my blindnesses,
to understand,  as I didn't at the time,
why people said no thank you,
why they slipped out of my life

Now I've conveniently forgotten
so many of them, lost touch
with almost all.
Not that they'd be eager
to hear me say
how I was thoughtless  -
this was something they knew all along

But I should know -
all our lives
have machinations
that keep grinding us
through unexpected turns,
churning us through changes
we never would have asked for,
never would have thought that we could bear

When they spit us out, maybe we're  better,
reciprocal receptors better honed,
maybe we appear more as we felt ourselves inside,
more how we had hoped we would be seen.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 14, 2022

Yours

 

Every beast of the forest is Yours,
which means,
there where they stand -
this one I'm imagining, for example,
a stag -

As Yours, he must possess
the radiant belonging, the sense of right,
the unassailable
delight of being.
He must know for certain
that what he is
is exactly perfect
for his place and time,
that his presence
is designed and desired
and celebrated. This must exult
throughout his form and breath,
must fill him with Your power,
must halo him in peace.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 13, 2022

More after effects

 

You could throw some huge ball of metaphor
up on the roof, throw your speculation
out of sight,
and days later, ramifications
could come sifting down,
mundane meanings
needing to make place
for shifts in thought,
questions of what's important
being reconsidered,
and finally things will start to settle,
maybe some truths have been uncovered,
maybe some clarified, some polished

Everyone who does literature
is trying for some such effect,
trying for truth, anyway.
It can be my job, as reader,
to receive what is offered,
to integrate it, whatever way I can,
with what I know.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 12, 2022

After effects

 

After the audiobook,
the cadence of the author's voice
still echoes through my mind,
asserting its abstract imagery,
braids of sound like water
or like flame

I think her voice was speeded up
a little, and traces of the on-edge sense
her speed induced
still spike my mind,
though I am sleepy,
and I want my own room back,
the gentle rhythms of my own thought,
my own words -
I want my dreams to run clear
so I can  nestle once again
into my own peace.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 11, 2022

Footsteps

 

There's what you intuit
and how you pursue it,
the stuff that would block you
and how you move through it

The choice day by day
to be free from enslavement,
the  vigilant struggle,
once free, to remain so

You can't have an enemy
without being one.
You can't be a light
without sharing it.

You can't understand
the goodness of creation
without knowing
how good you are yourself.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 10, 2022

Safe Harbor

 

A way to find safe harbor

is to be one - this I feel today,
having extended welcome,
and still basking in the comfort
of that simple act

More than words and gestures, I think,
the heart behind it -
that offering served to open the way
for me, too, to sail in
to where the breezes and ripples
are kind.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 8, 2022

Meeting

 

The fog walks lofty
across the distant trees
in the early morning

The sun glows bright
across the grass
just before it sets

The sense within me
that calls it beauty
meets these scenes with joy.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 7, 2022

Tributary

 

Consider the state
of not needing to say anything,
just hearing the sounds of the day
collected now in memory - conversation
and the whir of various instruments.
Memory, too, of how the sun warmed the air,
and brought out the scent of earth

And there were true things to communicate
but no sense of need
to be seen or understood,
and now there is the imprint
of having spoken,
but no further purpose for the words.
After all, it's not my role
to make a story of the day -
I fall in, like creek into river,
tributary to Spirit alone.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 6, 2022

Birds in the oak

 

The sun and the company invited us
to fly down the day
like it was a long grass hill,
our arms out wide,
embracing the air as it rushed by,
trusting our feet to navigate,
trusting the curve of the hill
to bring us out safe

Birds in the oak tree celebrated
collective being,
singing, flying, returning.
We celebrated too,
Life having its way of calling us
just like that.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 5, 2022

Longer Days

 

Everyone sings of longer days  -
the wheeling geese, perambulating turkeys,
two kinds of blackbirds in the pasture oak.
After dark, the frogs sing in the northern pond.
The ease we feel  - it seems we all are led
to reach out and share it,
to make sure everyone enjoys
the coming light.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 3, 2022

Right of Being

 

I feel us coming conscious
of a simple fact, the truth of which
unpins a whole metropolis,
all its intricate relations and
exacting machinations
imploding
into
irrelevance

I feel the mirth of it,
the little ripple that becomes a laugh,
the rolling freedom rising up,
the waves of burdens
falling off, falling off
and now gone

Much larger than a birthright,
this right of being settles in,
this not needing to earn or prove
anything, this priceless value
of each of us
is everything we ever need.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 2, 2022