Play

 

I fantasize about a mud Anna,
a figurine of clay, made at the riverside,
a thing that children do, their mothers
playful, too, their daily work
fresh with discovery

I reimagine life as full of play,
needs for survival
managing to bump along somehow,
be met in flexibility
instead of worry,
with laughter
instead of anxious toil

It could be possible, not that I have a key
for reinventing work and play
in our society,
but for myself, I think I'll find a sweeter way
the more I can allow myself to play.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 31, 2022

Leaps of life

 

These leaps of life we make,
innocent as sky,
reach to the heart of who we are,
and we are pleasing
to anyone who sees us,
we are pleasing
in the interwoven dance of Life,
we are pleasing to what sparks within us,
and we are pleasing
to our source.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 29, 2022

Being New

 

The early morning and I
meditate on being new
(after I stumbled here,
protesting for more sleep),
it having arrived with much more grace,
fog first, then high fluffy clouds,
tinged with pink

Right here, it shows me,
is the perfect place to start,
every thought fully able
to express the light, the dew,
none of them needing to rehash
some old argument, or even
a recent one. Every thought
can take this in, can bring forth
something completely new.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 28, 2022

A day on the land

 

We were raking grass
before the sun came up,
before our shadows
bumped long across the fields

The heat hadn't rolled in yet,
so we worked in comfort,
boot toes wet, filling the tarp
and dragging it back to the pile

We finished that task by eight,
others awaiting, needing to be done
before the sun began to burn,
before the hot winds rose

Then we retreated into coolness
(as sun-produced as outdoors' heat)
and finding our center
and fathoming what it could mean
to be love.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 27, 2022

Reflections

 

The moon is not in the pond.
The moon's reflection
is not in the pond either,
though it looks that way to me,
shimmering there

The moon is not fractured
though the reflection seems to be,
telling of ripples as well as of moon,
showing their shadows
on the pond's surface

I can learn of the moon
looking at the reflection,
but I can learn more
of both moon and reflection
by looking up.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 26, 2022

House

 

All of this is so beautiful,
and so temporary
that any sense of walls and roof
protecting or defining me
seems absurd

Other definitions and protections
fail as well, leaving me held
in what must actually support me,
learning from its presence,
what it is, and what I am.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 24, 2022

Something

 My sight clears, and I notice

that I'm peering at the emptiness again,
not sure when the things I took for objects
faded out

Seeking the refocus
that would find me something in this day,
for certainly, there's something here -
even this inexplicit satisfaction
is good for something

No need to scrape down into
the memory of tears, and their offer
to bring this day down into
something I can feel -

There is feeling, too,
in this craving for deeper purpose,
and it can lead me
to where I find it.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 23, 2022

Consider

 

Consider summer as time suspended,
and ponder if it's possible:
a day with no fear in it,
having sprung free of death's specter
and the shadow of other lesser gods,
to recognize the freedom
of being wholly owned
by the spirit of your dear heart's desire
and its unfolding in your present, active sphere.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 22, 2022

Here

 

Let me remember
to come here every day,
here where the morning air
breathes you alive
and your smile reflects
my exuberance

Let me remember
this here is available
wherever we are,
wherever the bright fact of Life
fills up all the space.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 21, 2022

Waves

 Waves like days roll in,

each one a fluid confluence
of wind and tide
and things we can't see, undersea,
each one worth watching
from where it forms
all the way to shore
and while it dances the sky reflection
up the beach

And the freshness of this one morning,
the one we're riding on,
breaks through our waiting senses,
splashing its delight
all the way through us.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 20, 2022

Grasses

 

Fill my day with something new -
winds across the grasses
assist them in insisting
this is the only now they have -
they will sing and bend and turn
and send their all-important seeds
each on its own journey

It is soul work, it is adventure,
and they do it now as if they were
the only grasses to ever live,
and indeed, as the only ones they see,
that could be so for them
except the ancient hum
intones its timeless song
along their shafts.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 18, 2022

To Heather - thinking of you

 

I think of meeting you hereafter
(though hereafter's not a time that I believe in)
I ask myself:
in my regimen where only now exists,
is there a place, a state, where we can meet again?
I consider:
what rare and rich awareness
can encompass fully all of me and you -
a way more solid than imagination
where you can truly tell me what is new?

It seems far off, but also within reach
along this journey of my steady climbing  -
I can prepare myself by being
always more of who I am
and seeing clearly
who you've always been.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 17, 2022

On this day

 

In the morning, I felt reflective
on the constructs I have held up,
and held dear, then shed like clothes,
like skin

Later, I felt connected
with the source of everything,
I felt embodiment
like a forming crest, like cambium

And now, well after dark,
after this long summer day,
well past my bedtime,
I feel ready to be led,
like a lamb, like a child,
to a more constant praxis
of my Truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 15, 2022

You, sovereign

 

Beware the misdirection
of those who serve the beast -
they put forth expectations
in a voice that makes you think
they are your own. They would have you
assume you want the things
they say you want, and fear
the things they say you need to fear,
and be compelled to follow
the story arc that they inculcate
to you and all the others in their thrall

You don't owe them anything!
You are the sovereign expression
of divinity. The logic of your being
asserts itself through all of you.
It holds the whole direction
for your life,
and you can follow it
in awed discovery
of all the joyful wonder that is you.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 14, 2022

Finding kindness

 

It well may be
you can find kindness
anywhere. Still,
there are some places not to go
when you are searching
for someone to be kind to you

(They spit you out!
They don't give you a chance
to speak for yourself! They speak
to their assumptions about you -
they never see you at all!)

Of course the best way to find kindness
is to be kind.
Then you can find it anywhere -
if not in others
then at least in yourself.
From there it tends to multiply  ...

©Wendy Mulhern
July 123 2022

Go ahead

 

Go ahead, take it -
take the empowerment  -
you'll like the way it feels -
it's definitely worth it
to ditch the victimhood
and the self justification

Take the empowerment  -
it's worth the humbleness it takes
to toss off how you've framed yourself before  -
I promise you'll enjoy it,
and you'll feel much more
like how you always sensed
that you could be.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 12, 2022

Compassion

 

Entitlement is not
a happy state of the heart.
Those who are whole
desire to do their part  -
they are fed by what they give -
to be a giver is to live

Compassion feeds the soul
and saves us
from swallowing the shadowed insult
of someone's expectation to be served.
They may be arrogant, disparaging, insensitive  -
compassion makes us whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 11, 2022

Father to Son

 

My son, I tell you this because
to share the hidden vectors
lets you take hold of them,
lets you wield them
instead of being secretly pierced

My father thought
hiding such things from me
would spare me, but I found
I had to treat his wounds anyway,
not knowing they were his,
feeling them my own

I know that what I don't transmute
I leave for you to do -
know that I'm working on it.
Maybe this way, somehow,
we can work on it together  -
maybe we both
can find a freer sphere.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 10, 2022

Landed

 Day fades,

shadows gather under shelves,
light still bathes the evening sky,
the moon upon it's long watch.
Cats grow active,
moths against the window
safe from paws,
travels have landed us -
here we are.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 8, 2022

Day moon

 

Why it makes me happy
to see the half moon
while looking up to harvest
high growing peas
must be a human thing,
or rather, something things that see
might share, curve of pea reiterated
in the curve of moon,
my needing to look up to reach the peas
occasioning the sighting  -
day moon colored like a cloud,
returning, with my sight of it,
all the other times it's made me glad.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 7, 2022

The day

 

See how many things the day is made of -
deeply rooted things, daily growing things,
things ephemeral as light against the clouds,
fleeting and eternal as ideas

I look up from my tasks,
and any one of them can fill me suddenly
with joy, and with a deeper sense of why.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 6, 2022

Evening rain

 

Early evening rain sings down the gutters
and into the tank,
trees and garden stretch tall and strong and happy,
We have done well -
we finished our tasks before the shower,
we have earned our companionship
and our easy rest.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 5, 2022

Plans

 

I can't plan for my mortality  -
the very stuff of it
falls apart like silt -
nothing I can build with
has anything to do with it

I can't plan either
for your mortality  -
I have to live as if
we have eternity to learn
the perfect grace for which we daily strive -
it is the only way that I can pick up
these essential strands
of all we care about,
and weave them day by day.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 3, 2022

Kites

 

The paths they each were taking
couldn't be seen on the surface,
couldn't be seen by each other
or even by themselves

They swooped and soared like kites,
and you might think they were governed
by the wind. But all the while
they felt the tug beneath,
the anchored place that didn't move much,
but was their guidance,
enabling their flight
whether they knew it or not.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 2, 2022

Bird lessons

 

I remembered a thing about birds -
how they need gravity
in order to fly,
how they squirt themselves through the air
using their weight to lean into the air cushion,
a thing they show us
about using the weight of our days
for taking off.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 1, 2022