Acquitted

So what’s real about this

(where are all your accusers?)

is the innocence

that has always clothed you

and that innocence

makes you innocent

even as the snapping jaws of guilt

try to close about you

They’re just made of dust

so they can’t do anything —

can’t stop you from being

your noble self,

cant stop you

from being free.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 28, 2018

Something Completely Different

Mat of roots at water’s edge,

persistent wind blowing

damp and gray,

steely sparkles from sun

mostly obscured by clouds,

hope seeping up into the day

We’ll take this time of change,

we’ll sink our teeth into it —

no point in trying to hide from it,

no point in getting lost

in the drift

We can have guidance,

we can be lifted —

this doesn’t have to be

all about falling.

There can be health.

There can be

finding the way.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 10, 2017

Escaping White Privilege

I’m tired of looking

round and round

in this prescribed place

of acceptability —

I’ve searched every corner

and some of what I want and need

is missing

And though I’ve been told

that my partition

is the one most everyone

wishes they were born in,

I’m not so sure

I’m thinking

I need to get out of here,

even if it means

giving up the stuff I’m told

others would most envy

I have a notion kindness

may be my ticket,

so I will prize it

and seek out every chance

to exercise it

I will build up the core

of my kindness

until it can do

all kinds of acrobatic things

or at least till it reaches

over the divide.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 22, 2017

Rock Fall

All those who have been wronged

for so many years, even generations,

lift up their voices. It is their time

to howl and howl. It is their time

to be heard.

The hearing is like

the tiny infiltration of water

into the face of rock.

It will bide its time —

it does not need to be a multitude.

In the mundane roll of seasons

it will freeze, and that expansion

will crack the rock,

and in the thaw

it will sink down deeper,

and one year suddenly

a whole cliff side may shear off

and fall, and bounce, and shatter.

Hear these ones who howl

for the whole mountain

is coming down.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 24, 2017

The Rule of Hearts

Let us not sleep.

Justice comes, not by hoping for it,

not by peaking periodically

from the cynicism we retreated to

last time our hopes were dashed

Justice doesn’t come by waiting for it,

for some last straw to topple

the systems that have ruled us for so long

In this moment, I claim my power.

My heart is humble in this, but still insistent.

It knows that every heart

has always yearned the same,

it knows that yearning 

leads to fulfillment.

This is the rule of hearts, 

and when everything else is silent,

they will be known to be

the only ones that ever sing,

and justice is their harmonizing —

when they join together,

we will win.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 17, 2016