To weather these times,
we ride on what we know will fly -
music, or touch, or high fantasy -
we find what takes us high
to keep our heads above the rising mire
Whether these times
encompass the swift end of all we knew,
or herald the bright dawn
of what we know must come,
we'll need the touchstones
of everything we love
to bear us through them,
to bring us home.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 31, 2023
I.
We talk about the failure of words,
but maybe it's not exactly that -
a thing of timing, more, or cadence,
and how the images,
though not strange,
rest in a different context,
whose description
would take a lot of words
and tax our listeners
We may have finer sensors than we know,
with which we measure
the time we have to speak -
space of attention
in which our words must fit,
or else the bubble will disperse,
letting our words fall
and our connection with it.
II.
And then again, there is an art
to listening, without intent
to offer any words, unless
they perfectly tuck in
to the place of need
that has been shared,
which they will do
if we have rightly heard
the space prepared.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 30, 2023
Outside, in the bright sun and cold wind,
the maple limbs stretch red against the sky.
The aspens reach eager and graceful
in their sea green tint.
Small flocks of birds come through,
and I'm glad these trees
give them comfort on their journey,
and maybe encourage them
to stay awhile.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 29, 2023
We welcome what sweeps through us
and makes us new,
we welcome sun, we welcome rain,
we welcome stars that show up briefly
at five a.m., and clouds the hills snag,
while they're blowing through
We call it life
for being so much more than we can fathom,
we call it love for how it makes us
glad we're here.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 28, 2023
Something that does not exist
cannot be shattered
High horse of my positions,
brittle presuppositions,
self justified opinions
don't need to fall in shards about my feet
Look at this tender dissolution,
silent, swift dispersal
of all of those illusions -
the sure fulfillment
of the law of presence
which holds me ever safe
here in my truth.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 26, 2023
In moments I fathom
having never touched down
into bone, into skull,
into what can be alone -
having never come to think
that I could be destroyed
or even lost - sitting present
in the sweet company
of consciousness itself,
which by its nature
is comprised of knowing,
and knows the feather movements
and the grand turnings -
rivers of awareness,
oceans of connection -
this being what is me,
this being what is us -
galaxies of bright communication,
universe of intermingled song.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 25, 2023
This will not be lost
(phrases snatched
like images from dreams,
nothing predetermined
nor tallied, after the fact)
This doesn't need to be a riddle -
it can be the sweet way you find yourself
after a full day - weathered,
suffused with heat,
dry after the day's cold wind,
feeling the strong contrast of the indoors,
thin but solid shell against the roving night
You find yourself within,
at peace, clean, ready for sleep,
willing to let fears and worries go,
learning to trust what holds you safe.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 23, 2023
I can be patient. I can reweave the web of
no way to be afraid
as often as I need to.
Reweaving does not connote failure -
it is appropriate to do it every day,
to take the bright new thoughts
and prove what they can add -
how they become the surface that I walk on,
the new fearlessness each moment offers,
rewoven into power for the day.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 22, 2023
We all are yearning towards ourselves,
our undiluted truth,
though we may settle, in the flash of time,
for something that reminds us of it
(a homonym, perhaps, or some non-fitting,
but still tempting, rhyme)
We put on what we do,
we try to realize ourselves.
When we fail, our truth,
though covered up, still gleams
(like coals in ash, which still have power
to ignite another fire)
None of what we posture
can make us any better,
none of how we fail
can make us any worse -
our truth - each one unique,
all of a kind,
will find us in the unity of Mind.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 21, 2023
The view parts like silk,
fraying into long ribbons,
the scene behind the screen
coming into view
It's not, as we had thought, a large world,
ourselves as tiny crawlers on the surface,
maybe able to unleash a cataclysm
but certainly unable to avert one
Instead, these pictures
(the weather, the economy, the politics)
will burn away like film, like mesh,
to show the wider landscape of the mind,
where we have much more power than we thought,
but only in the service
of what we really are.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 18, 2023
At day's end
my step is light,
my head is clear
(if rather empty)
I haven't stowed
things I couldn't say,
I haven't worried,
I haven't tried to solve
someone else's problems,
or taken in ill-fitting attributions
I've been open to the knowing
which accompanies all being,
I have taken on good tasks
and brought them to completion,
there has been joy, there has been laughter,
there has been kindness -
I am content, for that has been enough.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 17, 2023
Morning rises
through layers of unveiling -
dark lifts, fog forms,
softening the moon
Fog melts, and dainty clouds appear
in slowly clarifying blue,
sun tops the evergreens, and slides
slowly southward,
tiny dewdrops sparkle
on tufts of tender turf
Auspicious opportunities
parade before the hours -
we will ride some of them,
others will wait
We are in this day, in which
presence is progress,
and process has nothing to do with it.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 16, 2023
Silence is allowed -
it is the bed that all sound falls to -
stream bed, dream bed,
forest seep, leaf sleep
Silence lets things spread and sink,
sift and thin, ever in
It sounds like time,
and everything that can be lost and found,
it sounds like possibility,
it is the backdrop
for the first emergence
of what will grow,
the last breath
of what has gone to rest
This kind of silence
gives birth to music,
and remains its fast companion,
its dearest friend.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 15, 2023
(for my sister, biking philosopher)
A long sleep with deep dreams
delivered me, rested, into the day -
threads of companionship,
trailing along into the dark morning,
accompanied my tasks,
their happiness settling things
into a balance, where a breath
can set things in motion,
where they still move
according to their multiple connections,
and still remain, more so than when in stillness,
exactly what they are.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 13, 2023
I guess it's better
that there's no one here
to aid and abet my righteous sense of hurt,
no one to be an echo chamber,
magnifying what I say,
making these perspectives seem
to come from everywhere,
no one to give me comfort
in standing in a false place
So I have no choice
but to let that picture fall away,
no choice but to let my feet
reach deep into truth
and anchor there.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 12, 2023
These patterns - shards from a broken dome,
sharp edges of shattered expectations,
point to places ripe for change
This problem was never
as contiguous as I thought,
and my habitual reaction
is not the only way to be
I reconsider -
no need to be soft and cut and sobbing,
no need to bleed, waiting to be saved,
that which can shatter
has never been the truth,
that which is helpless
has never actually been me.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 10, 2023
I know there's so much more to consciousness
than what I use each day ...
If I could meet you
on some one of these other planes,
if we could converse,
perhaps by taste,
perhaps by sending some essence
through each other's systems
(which would be like talking,
just in another mode)
what you could let me know
would still be part of the great knowing
we all have access to anyway,
but something unique about your spark
would give me the same elation
as if you were
more conventionally
here.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 9, 2023
It was a time of sun and wind
and frog song,
and winter water on the land,
and color all the brighter
for the mostly muted season
Ravens overhead were unconcerned
who heard their family raucousness -
they, too, sent heart-lift,
joy of life and flight,
span of blue sky,
float of clouds,
rain-washed freshness of the day,
tokens of the hope that guides our way.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 8, 2023
Oh, Love, show me the way,
not just the broad, idealistic way,
not just the platitudes
Show me the myriad, immediate,
tiny water ways,
the present way to seep,
to move with love
in every aspect of my thought -
my first impression, my next conclusion,
my pre-perception outlook ...
How I take in and include
all the children of Your world,
all of the moments,
all the patterns that I name,
their dance and music
Show me the way
where service is the path of joy
and joy the path of service -
however slow or fast I go,
let me move with love.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 6, 2023
The water that came as rain
has seeped down from the hills
to settle in the grass,
ankle deep along the channels
where it seeks its way
towards even lower ground
Which made me think: Truth
is like a high water table,
right here, coming up through the grass
of our life's particularities,
not possible to overlook,
or to fear it doesn't cover
whatever needs it,
as it brings the depth of sky
to every situation -
effortless abundance.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 5, 2023
Nobody's taken a package home,
no one has grabbed it
to call their own,
nobody owns it and nobody lacks -No
good
but
One
And there's no measure for the infinite,
and there's no soul in which it doesn't fit -
the good we pull up in ourselves
flows without end -this is true for all of us
and everything that lives.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 4, 2023
Satisfaction - good work,
good time spent, good place,
rain coming after outside tasks were done,
rain-framed coziness
bestowing time to read,
gratitude felt all around the edges
of my attention,
less for all this beauty and comfort
than for the underpinnings which hold us safe
and guide us steadily
in the direction of our hope.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2023
Not to assert my will,
nor yet to leave it behind,
but rather
to let my will out like much long hair,
let it blend with the will of the wind
Let those two be subsumed in the will
that doesn't push, nor need to,
that holds all desires
in deftly woven harmony,
that opens out all impulse
and unites us
in one grand expression,
granting us the freedom of our dance.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 2, 2023
You dip your pen deep
into the knowing of things,
you write what's true,
and because of that,
those who read feel the pull,
through your words,
to something much vaster -
they remember
they have known this
and they still know it -
it is the Spirit
by which they are impelled,
it is the Principle
by which they move.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 1, 2023
