Tea in Wales

Because of gratitude—

Its calmness and the way it spread

soft smoothing over edges of my day

I’ve just remembered tea in Wales

In autumn marked by bright and dark

of thundershowers and rainbows

Expansive hills and warm close rooms

to shelter us from cold

And tea with milk that must be cream

because its butter kissed my lips

while its soft steam

enhanced the coziness

of that sweet scene

So now

Like shared discovery of magic places

A buttery warmth spreads over me

and leaves its traces

Here where I need this peace

and these bright graces

to meet the challenges
the day occasions

How bountiful this gratitude

That now avails me

of the memory

of tea in Wales.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 8, 2012

Moon Lullaby

Lay my head on moon-touched clouds

Suffuse my sleep with moonbeams

Let their coolness flow along my breath

Their sweetness reaching deep into my dreams

So permeating, let its light refresh

with gentle steadfastness

my halting meditation

Bring to me the comprehensive rest

that stills my heart’s incessant perturbations

Hold me in your light

till morning’s wings arise

to bear me into day’s resplendent skies.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 7, 2012

(background music: Isaac Shepard, "Foolish Youth")

Celestial Bodies

In the wide domain of space

ungoverned by an overarching gravity

You fly along a path perhaps not knowing

what force has launched you,

where you may be going

what bodies you may meet

and what attraction

may draw you into one another’s orbit

Once there, you may not know what gesture

might pull the circle closer,

spin you tighter, faster

Or which off-handed move

may loose the orbit

and send you drifting off

on pathways fast diverging

Where you may wonder afterwards

what it was you did

or who it was — if it was even you

or if you had a choice, or it was destiny

Until some other gravity

attracts your interest

Or in the depth of distance

you forget.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 6, 2012

On the bus

On The Bus (Background Music: Max Richter "Horizon Variations")


On the bus

I look at you

and you, and you

and think of you as loved.

I notice, suddenly, how cute

you are — those shoes

and how your feet slip into them

That chin, that slight tilt of your nose

And you, that face, that’s smiled

so many times, that has such memories

within its lines

Could be your smile right now is from the thought

of something twenty, forty years ago . . .

I do it as an exercise

I think of you as loved . . .

I find a smile has settled

on my face

And now, a visual litany

a thought parade of those I love

Recites itself unceasing

in my mind

A treasure, this

Well worth the weight of carrying

Indeed, it carries me

with all the energy I need

into my day.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 5, 2012

This body made of thought

In this body made of thought

Made of moving, intersecting vertices

Made of whorls of cross connecting vortexes

There is a place unutterably still

A furry animal may curl and rest

So soft, so trusting, so at home

While outside, body moves

As mistress of the winds

Interchanging energetic waves

This body made of thought is hard to size

It sinks into the earth, it kisses skies

It moves with and creates the winds that rise

It’s everything reflected in its eyes

While on the inside, concentrated quiet

A weightless place, where every forming impulse

floats

before its launch in integrated motion

and after it’s received back to its home

It is a new anatomy

What book has shown us this?

And yet we saw it

And we felt it

And we named it what it is

And now that we have named it

We’ll see it more and more

Dynamic body made of thought

And its deep, quiet, potent core.

 © Wendy Mulhern

March 4, 2012

Fifty years

A half century

isn’t even half a dream cycle

for a rock

which may sit impassive

or be carried

or be dropped

where, if it’s reencountered

it will be the same

But in a half century

a forest can swallow a town

that has been abandoned

Push up trunks through old foundations

Cover up the markers with its leaf fall

Fifty seasons, fifty rounds of rain and wind

tracked across the land

Recorded in the memory

of tree rings, river beds

and consciousness

Fifty years, each singular

And at once the same

And if we rise

and travel through

a cycle of awareness

coming back to where we see the whole

Then fifty years is ending and beginning

A season in the journey of the soul.

© Wendy Mulhern

March 2, 2012

Unhooking

To fly free

you must release yourself 

from every hook

The meat hooks

that strung you up in helpless fear,

that said you were unworthy

or somehow flawed —

that what you’re good for

hung on what the judge decreed,

or what somebody else would pay

The fish hooks

where you took the bait

of acquisition

self improvement

hot pursuit of things to make you more OK

The cockleburs

all the little irritations

where you thought if things were only different

you could make your way

Each release will be a healing

Each closed wound will bring you strength

and let your spirit range a little further

coming back with joy

to urge you to continue

to claim your stature of infinity.

© Wendy Mulhern

March 1, 2012