Friends

They walk and talk and flock

Their glances flit

Their shoulders wait to settle

Their bodies to be hugged.

In each one

Love rises like bubbles

through the complex layers of fears

Rolls up laterally

along stories crafted for self protection

Finds the cracks and squeezes through

Attains another level.

Love shines from deep within

a glow

that won’t stay trapped

It must gain strength

as it goes higher

and is seen as beauty

and is seen as grace

as mama-bear-caring

for each one’s safe place.

Love surfaces

fervent in tattoos

and incongruous, amazing eyelashes

and sudden, brimming smiles

and eyes that see them.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 14, 2011

A Young Poet

The currents flow

close to the surface

Heat rises quickly

The quick is quickly cut

He deals in this -

Emotions’ currents

his currency

“I bleed, therefore I feel

I make you feel

therefore I am

All that I dare

will make you love me

The love of many

makes me real.”

This is his thrill

To stand before us now

To lose himself

in his own abandon

for our finding 

of ourselves

and of him

and of why we are here.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 14, 2011

sinking

The water closes over it

And it’s gone

The ripples lap over each other

And disappear

No sign left that anything

Was ever here

Other perturbations take their turn.

The water takes its color from the sky

The sky is deep; within it, many echoes

Across its breadth, a varied palette stretches

The water’s depth may thus stay undefined.

How far, how deep, how slow, how wandering

May be the drop down to the ocean’s floor

The surface stillness leaves a space for pondering

What worlds beneath have slipped away before

And if the momentary ease of foundering

Should be resisted.  Help me find the shore.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 8, 2011

The angst that haunts my edges

Here’s the confusion of my current state:

No poem, because of nothing to relate

I’ve given up on hearing back from Harvey Hix

Nor can I count on Facebook for a feedback fix

What then? What? What can my future be?

What will fulfill my purpose, prove my destiny?

Can I love everyone enough to heal?

Heal me and everyone who has a need?

Or am I sentenced just to eat chocolate

And feel the roving hunger chocolate can’t touch?

Why do I always write about myself?

Don’t I care about anything else?

Enough! It’s time to stop this whine and do more

Let later days recount what these have been for.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 6, 2011

Rush

My heart is open, and a wind blows through it

A wind of longing and of deep hope

For this my life, what I may give to it

As sun gives magic to the far slope

The rush of high I feel, what calls it forth?

Is it these people, are they like none other?

Is this my tribe, my compass home, my true north

Just taken half a lifetime to discover?

Or is there something else, a shift in attitude

That lights me up, and everything I know

A unilateral influx of gratitude

That shows us shining in our native glow?

If so, it signifies a clear design

Where everything that lives may so align.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 4, 2011

Here, now

Your presence moves me

Inside and out

Till I am all wind, all flight

Curling and wafting with each breath

Kindling with internal light

This, this must hold the essence

Of what I am to bring forth

What I am to move in the world

I turn again, skin on skin

What brightness! Power coiled within

A rushing wordlessness, a silence

That cries a mantra to itself

This! This is what I came for

Here, here is where I am

The endless softness

Reunion of our lips

A different being, long preceding us

Moves within us, teaching us with touch

Its ancient mysteries

In each exchange, so much.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 2, 2011

Day's report

Today has been a day of

rolling sails and stowing tarps

moving boards and loading scrap

folding cranes and writing prayers

hosing down the floor

While the sky has had a way of

rolling out stills 

from a dance

on a grand scale

dark gray flecked across white

white gliding into blue

bright display of pink

hastening towards dusk.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 1. 2011