Lightening the Load

What can you make out of

old connections, letters from people

long lost track of? Is there value

in the warmth of their tone, the obvious

love they shared? 

Is there a reason to hold on to words

whose context is long gone?

And is this related to hunger

that keeps coming back

however much I eat?

The past may be remembered or forgotten,

I can think of it with fondness or regret,

and maybe truly, all there is of it

is what I carry in my daily steps and breath.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 10, 2017

House of Sticks

I don’t want to spend more time

in the house of sticks

with its rickety stilts

sticking down into the river,

not enough integrity to be a boat

and so required to constantly

resist the flow

I don’t want to rely

upon its chinks and weaknesses

to let the flashing light into my vision

(its shaking makes the roaring current fearsome)

Don’t want to be

the victim of its fall,

pierced with broken points,

toppled in rigidity

I want to slip free,

lower myself gently

into the coursing brightness

and glide.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 9, 2017

Under the Storm

Storm at the windows

keeps us indoors,

wind flinging rain

all along the south side,

white pine bending,

tossing itself back

Some of us find goodness

under the storm,

some of us find it

in the shining of fine days,

proving (though we may come slow

to concluding it)

goodness is everywhere

And though it may seem treasonous

to abandon the system we’ve known —

small brightnesses etched out of darkness,

sadness and fear as defining factors —

in truth, Life wheels itself quite well

in the overarching fact of all goodness

Nothing is missing, 

nothing is left undefined,

Life sings through all the storms

and all the clearings,

thus showing itself to be all.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 7, 2017

Reweaving

Notice the changes

from walking through time,

things that shift, 

things that unravel,

ways we thought were the givens of life

suddenly proved

to have been gone

long before we noticed

We fall quickly

through things that we counted on,

feeling the searing fear

mixed in with soaring free

not to be held in the place we were sewn

We walk through the fringes

reach for connection

trying out how we can reweave the fabric

to hold us together

but in a new pattern,

one where more of the bright threads show

one that will hold up the weight of our souls.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 6, 2017

Shadow Warfare

This shadow warfare is elusive,

for when I raise my hand to strike,

I make another shadow

I chase them inward

down all the corridors

where more and more of them have hidden —

they lay blame in sprawling overlapping patterns

over me, my circumstances, and the entities

identified as other

If I turn on them with anger or with loathing,

I’ve embodied their dark quality

and they win,

so I continue inward

till I find the only tool of victory,

inward to my grasp of endless love.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 5, 2017

Purging

I will clear out

all that doesn’t serve me,

books I never read,

shelves of past regrets,

all the inner stories that stunted my unfoldment,

wily and continual betrayers

I do not need

memories of weakness,

dire affirmations of historical shortcomings,

don’t need all those old complaints

or that dusty disapproval,

don’t need those assumptions or constraints

I’m getting rid of

anything that’s broken,

anything that’s worn out or outgrown,

I’ll let the spring shoots

fill in all around me,

I’ll let fresh new views

become my own.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 3, 2017

The Sharing Space

Let me remember once again

how to come into the sharing space,

to level the balance,

to leave outside

all impulse to steer

or to get you to change

I come into the sharing space

not with speech but with listening,

I enter the sacred

as seeker, as witness,

prepared to be overwhelmed,

lifted, transported,

prepared to be shined through,

prepared to be changed.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 2, 2017