True Testimony

I will not argue

against myself anymore.

I will not deny

my power or my desire,

I will not take the side

of death, decline, fatigue.

I am alive,

and Life’s essence

is the one thing I must manifest

in the being of myself —

I must always move as Life moves —

growing, sheltering, blooming,

attracting, rejoicing, communing.

I separate myself

from the internal voices

that try to make me think

I desire inertia.

I am of Life,

and Life supports my being

what it is, what I am.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 25, 2013

Forward

Your arms full of tools,

your face full of sun,

you face the task at hand

armed with resolve.

And what would ever hold you back

except those voices, that can only say

“you don’t want to do that.”

They are as insubstantial as shadows.

Shadows can chill you,

but only when you’re not moving —

their bars can’t hold you in.

How bright the joy

of going forward —

Your movement, not your fears,

thus your defining substance,

your goodness not in theory

but in action,

your life not in the future but in now.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 24, 2013

Today

Joy springs up,

bubbles along its channels,

overflows.

So much goodness in today —

Things that waited many years to surface,

deep in hidden aquifers,

pulled up by gratitude,

sweet from long, cool resting

under rock;

Things that came just now —

the rising to the challenge

of present weather,

the brightness of success in being true.

Joy feeds joy,

as gratitude brings forth the same,

Goodness stays

when circulated day by day.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 22, 2013

Keeping

I will keep

what’s been committed

to my trust —

each precious soul-glimpse,

each secret shared

(or spilled, in the earnest, bumbling

sloshing of a heart,) 

each gift that’s given me

of hard-won ease,

each doubt-enfolded impulse

that fights its way through all those layers

and emerges

in some quick moment I may chance to see —

These are priceless —

I will give them all the honor they deserve.

I will keep them,

I will not forget.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 21, 2013

Principle

There’s nothing esoteric

in the law that governs everything,

no subtle knife edge

to walk on in the dark,

where truth would be delivered

if you could only get it right

(but probably you’ll wander in the fog)

The law that governs everything

is written in the code

of everything that’s governed,

as simple as light,

as ineluctable as grace.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 20, 2013

Recovering

Underneath

the roar of my breathing,

more solid than the many thumps —

my heartbeat and its tributary pulses,

deeper than the image of myself

spread out along the sprawl

of my body,

is where I find my peace.

There is a quiet fire

that doesn’t even flicker

at the perturbation of yawns,

that isn’t damped

by the gathering of fog.

It warms my bones

and sets them secretly aglow

beneath my flesh,

around my silent core

And it will burn

throughout the hours of sleep,

delivering me sound

into the arms of dawn.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 19, 2013

Atomization

Each of them felt alone

but maybe it wasn’t true.

Each felt the others were against them

but maybe it wasn’t true.

Each one felt caught up in a seesaw

where others put them down

out of a need to be the upper one

but maybe it wasn’t true.

Maybe the conflict 

really was a screen between them,

distortions in the filters,

which none of them owned.

Maybe if they felt betrayed,

or framed, or misconstrued

it wasn’t others, but a general fear

that fogged their view.

And maybe any one of them could pause,

Just stop.

Breathe.

Wait.

Long enough to let the dust fall away.

And keep on watching till they glimpsed

the other as a mirror,

shining, multiplying back their light.

It might astonish everyone

and maybe it’s true.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 18, 2013