Singularity

The evil beast will get you if it can.

Bear in mind:

It doesn’t have your interests at heart.

If you plea for lenience,

if you consent

to be at its mercy,

if you let it choose the rules,

it won’t choose in a way that favors you.

Stand up! It’s in your nature

to set the boundaries for your life,

to determine who you are

and what your heart designs.

It isn’t your nature

(despite the claims the beast intensely makes)

to let external arguments

define your place.

It may use a smooth and syrupy voice,

but never think

that what you want is sleep,

that you prefer to let what’s done to you

define you.

You know who you are

and you are called, right here, right now

to be that being,

to live your own unique, exquisite truth,

to hold firm in your singular perception

that balances the turning of the world.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 31, 2013

Wilderness

Walking here

I have to admit

I don’t know anything —

Nothing I could package

and deliver as a

Thing That I Have Learned.

I have no map for myself —

No one’s words hover at my shoulder,

especially not my own —

no conclusion I can make,

no lesson I can take from here on forward.

In what way can I say I know anything,

of life, of love, of death?

Yet when I close my eyes

and follow my breath

into the undergrowth of dream,

I feel like a wilderness

and it feels good.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 30, 2013

To Chris: Angel Wizard

It took coming together

to know

the gift of your questions —

to see how broadly they were cast

and how we each,

from our deep longing to be heard,

were so enchanted —

sweet that you should ask,

sweet that you should listen

with such articulate and cogent interest —

the light so thrown on us

that (what now seems surprising)

we never thought to ask about the source —

that unassuming shining

that reached out to hold us up

and make a structure

in which we held the love

to keep you safe.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 29, 2013

Centrifuge

Hold my hand,

for we are spinning

and I feel the power

of the centrifuge:

We could scatter,

we could be adrift,

we could grow cold.

Hold my hand

and we will be a wheel,

Hold my hand —

we’ll be a constellation;

With the force

of our collective gravity,

we’ll keep this warmth;

With our collective radiance

we will cohere.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 28, 2013

A Moment of Silence

(for Chris and Aviva, or maybe for the rest of us)

A moment of silence

for the parting of worlds,

a separation I don’t understand

though it is frequent —

It’s like when a stone

drops into water —

the ripples spread out on the surface

as the water is opened

and then closes

with the blip of its round edges

coming back together

But the stone is in a different world —

the medium is thicker

and it falls more slowly

down and down

even as our marking of it

moves out and out

I can only imagine them —

all the edges of awareness

keenly open

as they enter

the next adventure,

perpendicular to that which we perceive.

A moment of silence

to let the stone fall through,

and feel the ripple.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 27, 2013

Living at the cambium

I start to understand

living at the cambium —

that thin and vibrant layer

between structure and protection

where everything is new-born

and anything can change

I may have viewed my life

projected over time

as some determined specimen

which could be judged and graded

and would end

But here in this experience

of ever-new creation

in the eager greening 

before the form —

this place of generation

which pushes out the growing tips

and thrives,

There is no noun of me,

no stepping back for an assessment,

no self-image, nothing to defend,

just this new greenness,

this reverberating verb, 

the forming of a now that never ends.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 25, 2013

Turn Away

Turn away —

Do you have to see each hook,

each place along the ladder

where each of us has been

so deftly tethered?

(Most of us don’t even try

to find release,

deeming the resulting fall

too perilous a risk)

Turn away,

for you don’t need to fight the structure,

You only need to cease to give it life.

Turn away

by turning towards your truth, your love,

Walk there

and all the hooks will fade.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 24, 2013