All the Answers

It’s OK

if you don’t believe the resolution.

The resolution scoops down

underneath all your doubts

and catches you up, whole.

It’s good that you don’t settle

for pat answers

that don’t include

the niggles and the questions,

the need, sometimes, 

to be unfinished, complicated,

unexplained . . .

It’s important that you don’t 

esteem the Allness

as just what may be showing

on the surface

There’s time.

There’s time for every little curl

to feel its center

and its code

and its potential,

There’s time for every world

to circle home.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 8, 2014

The Allness

I can’t paint

the allness of being

on a canvas supplied

by the framers

of the big lie,

Can’t depict

the grandness of good

with the paltry palette

of commercial symbols,

Can’t comprehend freedom

in the confines

of the box of fear.

I need to quiet down

and let the chatter clear

My heart, on its own

will always move toward truth —

It will sink down to it

with the certainty of water

and spread out to it

in the steady drift of clouds,

It will rise to it

as heat moves ever out to warm the cold

and it will settle

in the solid pumping presence

that it always holds

And there, beyond the clamor

of the last condemning voice,

I will meet the Allness

and rejoice.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 7, 2014

Rising

Tide is rising

and the craggy pools

where craggy animals had hidden

all alone against the scrutiny of sky

begin to have connections —

water seeping in

as if from nowhere,

channels forming,

tenuous potential

for some long-forgotten

kind of joining . . . 

And then suddenly

there is no separation at all —

waves rush over everything

and they are all united

in the common deep.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 5, 2014

Cloudscape

You start to wander

down the corridors

the scene shifts

before you get to ponder

how your thought drifts

how you start to wonder

what can lift you

from the tilting under

till you stop.

Those arguments

can roll past your head like clouds

and contract and expand

but they won’t touch you

and they can’t move anyone you love

and whatever shadows

they may cast across you

will move past

and be gone

You have been here

longer than your doubt

and you’ll endure

longer than the drama

where it twists

and tears you for a moment 

and comes out.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 4, 2014

More Changes

We slip through

changes like beaded curtains,

changes like painted landscapes —

dry ice steam rises

catching the colors of the lights —

We walk through,

find ourselves outside . . . 

What has changed?

Values are inverted —

golds for purples,

shade for light,

soft light blue for tones of sunrise —

(Just the normal transmutations

of any day)

What has changed?

Unpredicted sunlight sifts through

the hair of boys in the cafe,

unexpected ease expands

moment by moment,

the old constraints replaced

each day a little more

by the positive assertion

of I Am.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 3, 2014

Night Rounds

I go through the house

turning off lights, turning

down the heat

putting the house to bed . . .

Outside, the rain

has settled in for the night,

Inside, others

head towards sleep . . .

Far away

my children tend their own orbits —

I have signed over

the ownership of their peace . . .

Here at home

the soft night light

radiates out

enfolding us all

in its embrace.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 2, 2014

Who You Are

So many teachings

tell you what you are

and you say yeah,

that’s nice,

but how will it help me

through all these weighty duties,

all the dread annoyances

of every day?

What does it take

to make them make a difference?

— One experience of filling up

with all the joy of it —

A joy so wide,

your former view

of who you are

can’t hold it,

can’t hold the great

suddenly unfurling 

You,

grand enough to encompass

all that goodness,

bright enough to light up

the whole sky.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 1, 2014