These Days

These days the bottom falls out of us

at unexpected times.

It could be a good thing,

dropping us through

our soggy cardboard efforts

to hold ourselves together,

down to the waiting, changing land,

the rain and all the spreading seeping

and the tender sparkles

of returning morning sun.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 9, 2018

Where we find each other

We will meet in the place

where nobody can be wrong,

where the luminosity of everything,

in night or day,

in solitude or chorus,

silences all empty, righteous chatter

and we blend, in the knowing

of the whole, holy, wondrous order

that liberates each searching tendril

and synchronizes every heart.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 8, 2018

Listening

The land speaks to me

in insect hum

and in the chirps of birds

along their daily paths

The air speaks to me

in the awakened breath

of all that is alive,

that rises eagerly

from the patient soil

and makes itself known

The day speaks to me

in the steady shine 

of its curving arc

as large and subtle

as the earth’s turning

It says, you will find peace

as you learn to be peace,

it says, come with me

and I’ll show you.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 7, 2018

Answers

I ask myself the questions

but I don’t know how it happens,

don’t know how all these distant things

come together,

how we collect what we need,

how we join the pieces just right

so things really work

There are so many arenas

in which I don’t know this answer

But I will note that,

in this one instance at least,

when I cried,

when I confessed my helplessness

(and after I had failed)

the answer came in

all by itself.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 5, 2018

Cup and Puzzle

As to the question of

why I am here:

I am here for this moment,

here for this healing,

here for the cup of

whatever fills my day

The puzzle piece I am

is not improved

by trying to make it more

like other pieces

that have already fit in.

The puzzle piece you are,

likewise, will not be helped

by alteration

It is not mine

to choose another cup

but to drink this one

and be satisfied.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 3, 2018

The way forward

In the way forward

there are no bragging rights,

no carefree membership

in some self-satisfied association

In the way forward

there will be solitude.

In the wilderness of

no one to ask for help

there is a hardening, a honing,

a time of leanness

and a propelling hunger

Rumor has it

there is great reward on the other side,

that, upon arrival, there will be celebration,

singing. There will be that precious

everyday joy, as well as the special one

of having traversed the chasm

I don’t know anyone here

who knows this from experience.

We shall see.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 2, 2018

Changes

The only place we’ve ever lived

is in the place where we can never die.

This isn’t what it looks like,

these days, these goals —

whatever I have thought of them before —

these changes . . . 

Now I’ll keep paying attention

to what lights us up

deep down at the source,

what makes us live and move

before we even enter all the surface fray

This isn’t what it looks like

but it is something. Indeed,

it overrides whatever I had thought —

these changes, this which never changes.

This which I may find to be enough.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 1, 2018