Temporal Tumbling

I reflect on the present times

when I’ve run afoul of the temporal —

burning the chicken,

letting mold destroy the car —

things are fine

until the moment when they’re not,

and then there is no turning back

All things temporal

can tumble …

There is a grace that rides along the top

of all events,

and cooks things perfectly,

and cares for all things well,

and, centered in the present,

is not slave

to how things fall

And though I stand here in this shambles

(such a mess to reckon with)

my next step

is not from here.

All things in time fall down

but grace will stand me on the ground.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 1, 2020

2020

A year to see with clearer eyes,

a year to walk away from lies,

a year to speak the nuanced truth,

a year to listen and to hear

A year to seek the unity of mind,

a year to leave the rhetoric behind,

to find the sanity of quiet voices

and leave the ruts of falsely defined choices

It could be now, it could be just the time

to cease our flailing and take on the steady climb,

and in the face of so much we could fear

it still may be a fine, auspicious year.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 2, 2020

Abundance of Years

This time in our lives

joy collects in deep reservoirs

in the slow spaces where time

has made room,

in the lack of will to worry

and the willingness to accept

The widened shapes of our feet

echo a broader knowledge

of what can happen

and how much of that

doesn’t matter at all

Appreciation is a ripe fruit

we can pick without judgment

in the ease of laughter

(less work than fretting)

and the lubrication of many past tears,

in the clarity of coming full

in the abundance of years.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 18, 2019

What does this mean?

What does this mean:

it’s not too late? —

when life has rolled on down its path

and suddenly I wonder

why I didn’t think to take a different course —

what it could have been

if I had better understood

and had availed myself

of current opportunities

If I had not been closed,

if I had recognized 

there was another way

to think or act

What does it mean,

it’s not too late?

I don’t know what it means

but I am willing to believe,

willing to wait in wonder

to see how this can be true.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 14, 2019

Parade

Sure, the thoughts of things

I could have done differently

do parade themselves along

from time to time, still sail by

trailing their pronouncements

about how much better things could be

if only …

My policy is

to let them go by once

but not repeatedly,

and never to climb on board.

The now I have is, after all,

the only one I’ve ever had

or ever will. And so it follows

that all good things are here for me,

as they’ve always been.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 27, 2019

No Matter What

In the end we will find

we have not been betrayed

by our choices. We won’t come to wish

we had known better

and done something else,

even when vast scenarios

play themselves out — if only …

Our coming into ourselves

is not a matter of chance, 

of choice, any more than is

the river’s course

or the return of waves

back along their cycle at the shore

We’ll meet again — I’m certain —

We’ll celebrate the beauty of our lives,

the tender light we each shed

on the world and on each other

in every place where we were meant to shine,

undimmed by how we dipped our threads  through time.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 24, 2019

Evening

In a moment things can change color,

the fall of light, the path of clouds,

reflection’s edges …

My thought trails behind perceptions —

I reach for color names

but cannot find them

Or I still think the walls are yellow

long past the time that shadow

has rendered them something else —

Is it a weakness of language,

or of my nimbleness of mind,

or some efficient function

of what I need to know?

— As evening pulls the corners into umber,

leaving golden glows around the lamps.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 20, 2019

Viewpoint

I don’t even feel like looking

at the end of the year —

I have no urging towards retrospectives.

I don’t want to look at next year, either —

I have no interest in resolutions

There will be things in the year,

events and growth and changes,

but I have no sense I can control them.

They will come through like storms

or sprout like seeds,

I will await them

but they will take me by surprise —

I have no view of them but this one,

on the ground, peering through vines and branches,

taking the next step.

©Wendy Mulhern

December 28, 2018

Time Travel

I let myself float

in the golden light and sound

of Christmas — bright peace

suffuses me, everyone

is haloed. This liquid

dissolves time, at least

for a moment, and I travel

through the years, along

the glow lines,

reaching back

to all the Christmases

where this illumination

punctuates the year.

©Wendy Mulhern

December 23, 2018

Taking the Train

We have come so far

along this haphazard path,

our footsteps not following

what we thought held our gaze,

our gaze, it turns out, being

too distracted and unfocused

to draw us to our hoped-for destinations

We will take the train —

its paths are laid down,

we don’t need to determine every step.

We’ll arrive where it takes us,

and if our lives feel unmoored, uprooted,

we won’t notice that so much

as long as we are moving.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 16, 2018

Home

In this damp afternoon

you long for home,

and it seems so far away —

removed in space

or else in time

And the memory

(or is it imagination?)

of walking into a place

and feeling you can relax

since you belong here,

since you are loved,

is as palpable as thirst

It can feel like

we don’t understand

our place in time, in this time,

with these currents of culture

so profoundly disconnected

The big trees that thrive here,

trunks heavy and mossy,

leaves fluttering, turning,

have their own sense of time and place

that we could take shelter in

if we knew how.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 6, 2018

Illusions

On the train again —

rolling motion, light and landscape,

fast change of parallax

lulling and nourishing

I take in

the illusion of movement

and the fact of stillness,

of being always here

riding along in the illusion of time

where neither past nor future

has any say in the unfolding

of the gifts of now.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 2, 2018

Speed Limit 5 mph

You are here —

please notice

the colors in the grass

and the way the air is moving

There may be swallows darting

and deer walking and watching,

there probably are turkeys

You may be headed somewhere

but you are also here —

please fill your senses

and let your heart breathe.

You are here —

please go slow and notice.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 12, 2018

Heather’s Day

When I can remember

how time turns out to be

nothing at all,

how the wholeness of you

was complete before we knew you,

continued so, all throughout that span

and is so now,

then I can feel

the joy of your being

that touched so many moments

and blessed so many hearts

so thoroughly, then as now,

and I can know

a similar purpose

attends each of us.

Your light can still

guide us there.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 7, 2018

Roofing

We get into the rhythm of the work,

pneumatic nail gun and the air compressor,

the scratch of asphalt shingles laid down against each other,

the soothing arc of our repeated motion

It smells like blossoms when we stop and notice,

the air is warm enough, cool enough too —

while many pieces of our lives are scattered,

this work is something we can do

The birds are taking up their evening chorus,

smells of people’s dinners join the breeze,

it feels like it’s a mode we could continue

for another couple years at least —

could be the course we take, the path we climb

unless, until, we’re lifted out of time.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 21, 2018

Sweeping down the centuries

Time is of no more use to me.

I’ve been forced to give it up.

From now on I will approach it broadsides,

I will move in the current

where our growing awareness of Spirit

sweeps up all the broken dreams of history,

sets to right every small and large sadness

that ever occurred,

unites us with our past and future generations

and chimes a chorus

that will echo throughout the vast eternity

where there is time no longer.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 18, 2018

Moving House

In these first days

I take a lot of time

teaching myself

where things go

In these last days

I grow more ruthless

about letting things go

In the stretch of memory

my mind inhabits

at all the moments in between,

I feel content with how it’s all played out —

what I have done, what I have been

Funny how I find happiness

not along the lines of time

but in the light the present casts

into the chambers of my mind.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 21, 2017

Magnitude

The magnitude of this redemption

is that it glows through all time

even as dawn

glows through all our space,

even as the radiance of love

makes everything alright,

even our history.

Any fears and sorrows that lurked there

are resolved,

for truth’s appearance

alters the past

as surely as it does the present

As for the future —

what will we know of it?

— when we are so rapt

in the presence 

of unfolding day.

©Wendy Mulhern

December 30, 2017

Markers

Nah, I’m not approaching

some kind of threshold —

no door advances towards me,

no conveyer bears me, willy nilly,

towards a place of change

My progress rather

is like the dawn

and the stately procession

of summer clouds

No reckoning, no tally,

just the roll of days

and the smile of light footfall,

barefoot communion,

electrifying praise.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 13, 2017

Approaching Summer Solstice

It is the time of honeysuckle,

the time of abandon

where vines wander and tangle,

where forbs race each other up

to the flower dotted tops

of their foliage

And birds are coaxing their young to flight

and it feels like there’s enough time —

enough time to get lost in,

enough time to find your cause.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 19, 2017