New

 

The day brought new landscapes
in most expressive watercolor
after the night's rain,
and I handily forgot
my struggles of yesterday,
as if they were nothing,
though nothing had changed  -
how blithely I forget!
and there may be a clue there -
perhaps I'm allowed
to be made new.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 30, 2022

In Common

 

When I release the labels,
every one of us can slip through the bars,
free as fish, smooth as silver flashes,
anything that bound us up in judgment
left behind, caught against the grate

We didn't need those definitions  -
we can laugh in sleek joy
to find ourselves united
in the bright grace of our being
and the unity with which we move,
sharing currents and clarity,
surging onwards along our common course.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 28, 2022

Transformation

 You can't touch the day

without being touched back,
you can't touch the truth
without wonder

There's no avoiding the transformation,
your substance chiming crystalline,
suddenly conductive of the whole
intensity of light,
your hands tingling with power

Once the connection is made,
nothing can be taken from you -
the wholeness of your integrity
renders you unassailable.
You are a gift now,
for you can't help bestowing
the transformation
everywhere you go.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 27, 2022

Seeing Us

 

In the domain of crickets,
in the realm of bright secrets,
things you can know
for the price of precise attention,
is a truth within each of us,
found when your gaze goes between
the beliefs and conventions,
practices, preferences, habits,
and stated intentions,
falling instead on the flickering glow
of that substance of us
that wells up from below
in response to what touches us
deeper than anything,
moving our hearts to delight,
quickening us and our light.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 26, 2022

Free to ring

 

Little one, today you are free
of the choice you made
so long ago, when your body
was way too small
for such decision
and you were way too new
for that kind of burden

It was a lie, the need to choose  -
you really could have had
all the good, and you still can -
you are free from every threatened consequence

You always have been a clear chime,
and no slipped felt could ever dull your tone.
Today, you can feel your full resonance,
today you are free to ring.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 25, 2022

My Father's world

 

I must remind myself
my Father's world is kinder
than the one that I grew up in  -
my failures, glaring though they are
do not require an unrelenting penance

I need only turn -
my honest self awaits,
humble and attentive and responsive,
wholly furnished and appointed
to reflect.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 23, 2022

In our hands

 

All the history of our lives together
comes down to this -
we hold the pieces in our hands,
and as we're ready,
we can place them together,
puzzle out the picture,
observe the linking patterns

It's not so much the pieces
as the way our hands will touch
while we're putting them together  -
they know each other so well,
and they will remind us.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 22, 2022

Season's change

 

I am glad for the light drumming
of rain on the roof, and its gurgle
into the waiting tank,
and the softening and greening of the land

We slide across the equinox
as quickly as a cloud shadow
darkening the valley,
our urgent journey unaffected
by season's change,
our sense of home
enhanced by it.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 21, 2022

Little joys

 

I notice myself garnering
joy from little things  -
fire in the evening,
coffee in the morning  -
though I have felt the pull
to dedicate myself
to larger causes

And have done so,
and felt the heady hope
and also undercutting deluge
of despair. Shouldn't this be easy?
- To put my full weight
into what I know is true,
and to be wholly unimpressed
by contradicting lies?

Shouldn't this be easy?
But when it's not, I guess
I also am allowed the little joys.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 20, 2022

I will try again

 

I will come back,
I will try again to talk to you.
I will pick up the flattened hope
that didn't hold
against your first responses

I will reconfigure my platform.
No. Forget the platform. What I need here
is my center. That and yours, so my words
don't wobble off, so our communication
doesn't collapse. So my perception of you
is not distorted,  and my perception of me
is not inflated,
and I have no preconceptions at all
but am ready to learn.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 19, 2022

First things first

 

Before any attempt
to show you anything,
let me be sure you can feel
that deep settled home,
that gravity
that balances you
with the core of the earth

And before I assess
where you stand about anything,
let me be sure that you feel
that bright buoyancy
that sends you up skyward,
home in the growing,
boundless and clear,
from the center of all that you are.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 17, 2022

The portal of Truth

 

And as for the fatherless,
and the children of lesser fathers,
trailing their tails of shame,
trying to build up a fortress to hide
what they came here missing

Look how they change
when they pass through the portal of Truth,
for no one has been lesser
in the grand configuration of our collective being,
and no one has been missing,
and no one has been lost,
and no imposters hid from us
the spotless heritage our Father gives us.
We all walk royal here.
We each bestow upon each other
honor and delight.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 15, 2022

Reading

 

My gratitude multiplies fractally
as I consider
all that goes into each aspect  -
the sounds, the words, the alphabet,
the means to write, the way that reading
throws an image straight into my thought,
full color, full nuance, full flavor,
so I can swoop along, in someone else's
created world, without even noticing
the surface that invoked the pool
that I dove into,
and the geologic layers of technology
that make it effortless.
Most of the time
I give it no thought at all. Right now,
I am in awe.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 14, 2022

I summon

 

In this time, to my mind, I summon
a truth more comprehensive
than the little cause effect chains I've constructed

I need something
to rise above the sadness my conclusions would evoke,
some vision that won't run aground
from shallowness of hope

I summon
the very substance from which arise
our most profound desires,
the substance that entails their sure fulfillment,
I summon
that which knows us all so well,
and which we know,
to make the circle round, restore it whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 12, 2022

On brilliance

 

Thinking that I'm so smart
(however justified the evidence appears)
has never gained me anything but pain

Please let me never
do that again -
I'm so sorry
for the stupidity it led me to,
blind as a slab, such broad miscalculations
in the shadow of my ego

Let me rather
attend to the brightness
of everyone else. Let my brilliance be comprised
of seeing them aright
and thus supporting
the dawn of shared enlightenment,
with each of us
contributing our own essential rays.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 11, 2022

Gain

 

Maybe it's not important,
the roll of days, the roll of years -
we are not stuck on them -
our lives move forward in the stride of Spirit,
our gains swift rides of capturing the wind,
and revelations, slow unfurling as a sprout,
coming present like the dew
in the dip of late night's coldness,
suddenly apparent when the morning light
finds it on the grass.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 10, 2022

Patterns

 

Moments when the evening brings
a recognition across substances,
surprise of patterns
in things of different planes,
crosswise in time,
make me ponder
the common elements we all are made of -
nothing foreign here or anywhere we walk
companioned by the ripples through our day.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 9, 2022

September

 

September rides two horses,
one foot on the back of each,
reins held easy in one hand -
the horse of summer and the horse of fall -
they gallop down the days
in the same direction,
in perfect step,
manes and tails and breath mingling,
providing an exhilarating ride.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 8, 2022

Pick me up

 

This could be what I need -
something to run with,
something that kicks up
like quickening storm winds,
something within me to give me the vim
I will need for the long trek ahead

Maybe it's been here
but I haven't known it,
or I hadn't known it till now -
let me be faithful in living it eagerly,
moving with vigorous stride,
Spirit song surging inside.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 7, 2022

Exchange

 

Lest we exchange the worries of summer
for the worries of fall - worries of fire
for worries of cold and wet -
let us remember
each day has space for stillness,
each hurtling revolution
has time for many lifespans,
and dreams float timeless
in the sea of thought, which itself,
though it may shift with tides
is ever vast enough
to see us home.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 5, 2022

What has saved us

 

We each will be grateful
for what has saved us,
for what has proved to be our swing
bearing us steadily up
after our fall,
when we shattered through the bottom
of our fears, and lay there, desolate

Each of us found it there,
the broad, abiding presence,
the sense of not alone,
the sweet nourishment
of being cradled -
when we shouldn't have, couldn't have lived,
there we were,
and it means everything to us

And if you haven't fallen,
have no fear -
in time you will be given
everything you need

You may think you don't want it -
that's OK - your knowing will still come for you -
you'll find it,
in your perfect time and perfect way.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 4, 2022

Mortality

 

If I die, I will die of mortality  -
there is no other cause of death. 
Other things people might call it
are so many irrelevancies  -
whether I die of grief or mistrust or fear,
or of the planet's burgeoning despair,
or of somebody's anger, or someone else's greed,
or of toxicity of any sort, bleeding
through the boundaries of being

All these so-called causes are just distractions,
for without mortality, I will not die.

Well then, let me consider
exactly what I am. Let me consider it
every hour. What are the colors and the flavors
of immortal moments?
What is my practice of living them?
It's not about not wanting to die,
but of yearning to finally really live.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 3, 2022

Could be

 

Could be a thing you think of
as a little tiny speck, a mote
carried by the wind
that chanced to land -
a thing so insignificant
it isn't even worthy of a mention

Could be the thing you think is small
was never elsewhere, never
drifted with the wind, never alighted here,
but is a place where the concealing paint has chipped -
could be that fleck of gold
reveals the whole of what you are,
and when you've seen it once,
you'll see it more and more
and will discover,
despite whatever you had thought,
it is more weighty
than anything you'd ever known before.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 2, 2022

Naturally

 

Before we're even ready
to fully own our nature,
stride the acceleration
of swift unfolding purpose

We still can feel our nature
enlighten daily moments,
fill them with sweetness,
let us knit together easy
with those we have been given to collaborate,
co-exult, co-inspire, communicate,
leave us sound and light bathing
in the clear reverberation
of all that we have seen, and been, today.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 1, 2022