Numinous

 

So many moments
bring opportunity
to enthuse on what the light is doing -
rooms, inside and out,
beckon entrance,
encourage passage
to some new entrancement

I go there with my mind
like flying with the wings of birds,
feeling their uplift,
gliding with their arc,
held and reflected,
numinous as day.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 31,  2021

Shift

 

Though I had imagined an epic story,

it turned out to be a very quiet thing,
though I had pictured myself
coming home in hero's robes,
there was nothing, really, to show  -
nothing I could say about it

So hard it is to describe
the inner transformation,
the little shift in thought
that changed everything

That showed my adversaries
innocent, after all,
that showed my premises mistaken,
but let in so much light
that I was glad to be shown wrong,
glad to be illumined from now on.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 30,  2021

Silence

 

I come around again to silence,
not knowing  -
is it too soon to speak
or are my words already spoken,
is there hope behind the smoke
when so much is broken?

Let my silence not come from my fear
but from my listening,
let my lack of words make space
for something larger  -
what fills all space can't be corralled with words -
return me to beginning with the Word.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 28,  2021

Anew

 

The sun and wind rest on my skin
like absolution,
the memory of fear of fire receding,
and in the place of what has burned away,
I'm walking in this newly minted freedom

Beyond all words for this, the sense
that passing through
is worth whatever's lost, and all it cost me,
and here the holiness of  being born anew
completely has outshone what I had called me

There is no going back,
for nothing past remains -
my feet step, awed,
on new terrain.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 27,  2021

Stars and clouds

 

We talk of big things  -
life's dreamlike nature,
society's entrapments  -
but do little things  -
staining siding panels,
making dinner,
shutting down the power for the night,
looking at stars

We talk of big things,
but it's the little things that matter  -
whether we were patient,
whether we were kind

And in the end, our eye lights
will be like stars,
while our words
are more like clouds.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 26,  2021

Comprehensive

 

In the way the world's ways have been served to us,
(chopped and tiered, large swaths discounted)
it's hard for us to fathom
how every single life is needed -
every perspective, even and especially
the ones that seem the most recalcitrant

They are holding out
for the most magnificent shining,
the one that will overcome
even their bleakest rages

They are holding out for a justice
so comprehensive
that no one here has yet imagined it -
the one that gives each one of us
our royal, rightful place.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 25,  2021

A clean start

 

Sit down here beside me  -
we have no time
to use the tools of the enemy -
the ruse of blame has played out
so many times, and each time,
we have found ourselves
back in its lap, sucking
its noxious fumes

Sit down with me, and we will talk
of gentle things, we'll leave
ample spaces,
enough to listen,
enough to really hear,
enough to go down deeper
than the former narrative
would ever let us go

We won't even think about
the enemy. Won't give it even
a breath. That way we'll make of it
an utter end, and have some ground
on which to start again.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 24,  2021