Spring Stream

We watch the earnest braiding of the water
just before the stream takes its meander
back and forth amid the clumps of grass
before it dips and swoops down the drop
singing as it curls

This stream and these blackbirds
sing duets together,
each honing their skill
in the other's purity

With our bare feet we feel
we take it in, too -
cold rippling enlivening clarity.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 30, 2020

In this world, what I consider possible
is more important than I may fathom -
it is the lie of impossibility
that has kept me from claiming,
in every place I've missed it,
my dominion

So let me broaden the tent of my belief
so there is room for happiness,
not just for me - rather, for everyone -
Let them be thrilled and awestruck
by the fact of their own being

Not under some as yet unmet conditions,
Not the false possible conveyed by some "if only",
but the true possible of This is what we're here for
and this is how we live, and this is what we are.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 29, 2020

Proper Nourishment

Let me live in the place
where there's no game of better,
no game of not better either -
no grades or ratings,
no reflexive search
for what is wrong,
to make occasion
for being right

Let me wean myself
from that addicting food
which never satisfies,
but keeps me craving for
another dose of wrong
to point my finger at,
to show my smarts against -
It doesn't have to be that way

Nudged by the wild plant lady,
I took a bite from the new growth
of douglas fir -
It was, as she said, refreshing,
surprising citrus before expected resin,
still tender to the tooth

And as she said,
I felt that it could nourish me
for many miles of walking,
and I could think of it as a gift,
I could be mindful every time I thought
of biting off another shoot -
take what is freely offered,
leave plenty behind.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 28, 2020

Before all that

Today I think of presence
not as something with me,
but as the very fact of my existence

Wonder it is that I see,
that I breathe, and that I have,
before all that, the great desire of being,
the hope, the love, all that waits
before the me I call myself arises
to greet the morning - all that cares so deeply
about something before what I define
as daily life -

I call it presence.
I step back into it
and go out with peace.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 27, 2020

All in good time

Grand plans notwithstanding,
life comes to us,
unfolding in small ways,
whether or not our presence
has anything to do with it

Far from our former need
to know everything yesterday,
we are content to notice what we do

Slowly the net comes together
to hold us graciously
in the web we hoped to make

Visions of how it may look later
entice us, appearing, as they do,
from wisps already here.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 26, 2020

Choose Life

We all have been under the pall,
all been asked
to choose a side and stick with it,
all felt sickened in the fear of losing,
or being found left out,
stranded in a faulty choice

There are rules of valliance -
rules of how to choose,
how to stand with courage,
how to fall with grace,
but one still faces
the daunting consequence,
dark underside of loss, of shame, of grief

And so consider:
Nothing else alive is ever asked
to make a choice like that.
It is plenty
for every living thing to answer
to it's own calling - to grow
in its own place and time,
to be directed by its own essence
in every moment of its being

If that's enough
for this wild strawberry,
holding raindrops as it blooms,
then it's enough for us -
to make no choice, to take no sides,
let no division compromise our love.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 25, 2020

Waking Up

I come out of the dream
of a small, dark, cluttered place,
and it takes me a while,
it takes me a while
to find my way back to myself

Oh, for sure, I was there all along,
the fabric of cause and effect I call me
never absent from thought -

Still, it takes a tuning -
tuning fork sound clear as water drops -
it takes being still, first,
then walking myself back,
back to my cause

So the sleepy gauze haze
can retreat from my eyes
and the clarion presence
that gives them shine
can reverberate through me anew.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 24, 2020