Bars

Though you may fall and fall

through the bars of memory,

hitting at moments, going back and down

Though you may feel

striped beyond redemption,

branded by the light and dark,

strobed to instability

You cannot fail.

This is not about you —

it’s about your Maker,

and your Maker knows you whole.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 31, 2018

A Touch of Grace

And if you feel you can’t forgive,

can’t be forgiven,

if barbs from old stings

tear at your flesh,

let that body go —

it was never any more

than just a dream

Whatever scars it has

will melt away, along with

all its trappings of identity.

The memories it holds

that waited to be triggered

will melt as well, giving place

to what has longed to waken

to the touch of grace.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 30, 2018

Joy

There is a way forward.

Joy, it turns out, is unsuppressible —

it pushes its way through rocks,

through roots,

it moves sideways, as it needs to,

but ever up — it finds the surface,

it emerges

Joy, it turns out,

changes everything —

past, present, future —

brings the sense of things

into startling focus,

into sparkling view.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 29, 2018

Light Rules

Having walked once

on the shore where light rules,

we see it everywhere,

and in the quiet of the scrish of sand

give up our battles

There is no need to fight

over the relative presence

of light — no person or way of thinking

owns it. It owns every landscape

where it appears. It will always,

effortlessly,

bring itself forth.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 28, 2018

Like Water

There might be other rhythms here,

rain in the gutter, metallic tick and trickle,

rain on the window, the hum

of spaces in between —

rhythms to hear when the stereo’s off,

music against the quiet

You get your message across

by listening, more than by speaking,

by finding, like these raindrops,

the place where understanding trickles in,

and where it glances off,

and needs to be collected, redirected

You listen, and your message finds its way

like water, into the waiting ground.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 27, 2018

Indoors

We can also find pleasure

in aesthetics, colors combining

in journals, in fabrics,

musical artistry, broadcast for viewing,

planes of reflection, hum of appliances

One could spend time indoors

in a place like this,

hardly missing the somewhat tame outdoors.

There is time for this

when the rain pushes in,

and there’s gratitude,

gratitude for shelter.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 26, 2018

Coming Home

There are many ways to come home —

driving a truck north through the rain,

building a fire, centering thought 

In each place called home

there are needs to meet

and ways we are met

So we have come home,

today, as many days.

Tomorrow we will come home again,

from where we have been,

in tomorrow’s ways

We seek the same thing

and we find it,

ever the same, ever new.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 26, 2018