On Falling

You can’t fall

into the darkness

because your being

is made of light

No gravity affects it,

and even if it could fall

it would bring its essence with it,

lighting up the way and pushing darkness

ever farther off

You can’t fall into darkness

but we can release

any dark presumptions that have tried

with jagged scribbled lines

to draw a ragged image 

on your form

We can let them go

and they’ll fall down,

way, way down

where they don’t even have a story,

far away

where they can trouble you no more.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 29, 2019

Following

This is not a process of grand arcs,

though grand arcs inform it,

this is the way light falls

on every mote, on every crumble

of the soil, the way it sifts

between the needles,

falls to earth in chinks among the shadows

I cannot accomplish it

in one great sweep —

I follow it along the moments,

let the light seep

into every patch of thought it can redeem,

understand it now and now and now

ever new again along my path.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 28, 2019

The shapes are not the light

If you brought them all together —

all the moments, from many different lives,

where the dream was broken through

and the light poured in —

You would see many different shapes —

a death, a near death, a psychedelic trip,

the answer to a prayer offered

from the very depths,

a gift of life received, the gratitude invoked —

The shapes are not the light.

Light can come through anything.

And what you do with the dream

after seeing the light

is not trivial. There is guidance

to be found, about how this is done,

guidance, and guides,

along the upward way.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 26, 2019

Needed

All of them needed to know —

needed a way to look up

from their burdened lives,

from their crashed or crushed visions,

the dysphoric drag of suffocating stories,

they needed a better way

to catch a breath

than the scrabbled pushing aside

of some of the worst weights

All of them — the ones thought fortunate

and the ones thought down and out, 

needed something more,

needed this —

the bright assurance

welling from within,

the blessed kinship

with all that’s light and lovely,

the solid truth about their royal being,

never held down,

supplying all their needs.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 25, 2019

Words and Light

If I could tell you

my deepest, newest thoughts,

they would have the same words

that I’ve been saying for years,

the same words others are saying,

no doubt, like me, noticing that

the essence they are trying to convey

does not come through

Words! — they are fickle vessels,

more like light projections

that you can walk in front of

and fill them with your shadow

while the image is reflected

off of you

But light — light can inhabit words,

if briefly, and it can keep shining

in listening’s reflective silence.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 23, 2019

Integral

I was tempted by the mantle

of the good guy —

the evidence compelling,

the accolades attractive

But I considered —

What, then, of the bad guys?

Is there anyone I’m willing

to throw under the bus,

to think of them as scraps

to pull away from my fine cut out

and discard?

No. Let the cloth be whole.

Let there be no one condemned,

no one discarded.

Let the good I am

be one that holds out

for the true picture,

where no one is cut out

and all are welcomed,

where everybody’s place is integral.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 22, 2019

Closure

The prospect of departure

is like wood settling in to the fire,

causing a quickening of flames —

our actions burn warmer

though there is less fuel

to work with

We will do what we can

and leave when we have to.

There is power and comfort

in closure.

We’ll savor the silence

before the next act.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 21, 2019