Your mind’s delight

Never underestimate the value

of imagining what’s possible,

never assume you can’t 

have what you want,

never believe that you should settle

for less than the whole of your dream,

the whole grand many-branching

multi-plumed array of it —

it is, after all,

in your mind for a reason,

and your mind’s delight

produces clear results.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 6, 2019

To my inspiration

I will trust you to be there

in the morning, after the washing clear

of all the wear lines of the day,

after dreams have danced in water-like dimension

through the fluidity that wipes it all away

Somewhere in that time

well before sunrise,

when we awake and start

our pre-departure gatherings,

I trust that you will tuck yourself

like hope, into some pocket,

to lift me, later on,

to be my dawn.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 13, 2019

A Word of Advice

If you’re too tired to find your daily poem,

don’t stay up late to read a novel —

its world will trespass on your dreams,

displace you from your peaceful center

Beware the morning, then, whose overcast

may not pierce through the web that spun you in —

you’ll sit in stupor trying to remember

what gives your life its lift, how to begin …

But if you find yourself in this condition,

it’s folly to succumb to doleful doubt —

you have an easy, obvious solution —

even a silly poem can pull you out.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 19, 2018

Signs

I.

Today at the end of my bike ride,

enjoined from coasting no-hands,

I imagined wings at my shoulder blades.

I could feel them, and the way my lungs filled

as they opened. My breath deepened,

and emotions pulled at my chest

I could feel the work of muscles

down my back, I could feel

how wind caught 

under their downstroke.

I felt myself lifted,

I heard the wing beat,

the rush at my ear.

It was more than enough to compensate

for my three fingers on the handlebar.

II.

I take it as a sign of goodness

that the air has cooled —

the wind has come around from the north

and the clouds have gone to cirrus,

still visible in pink above the afternoon’s

high cumulous, as twilight

wafts in on the drier breeze

promising deep sleep.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 19, 2016