After the Competition

“The first thing you hope

is to not crash . . .

The second

is to feel you did reasonably well

So I succeeded in both of those,”

he says,

a smile escaping,

releasing a few of the

giddy little bubbles that are rising up

making him feel light.

The scores corroborate;

something shifts and settles,

and he stands more solidly.

I too feel something –

a long, slow release –

no need to worry for my son:

grow in peace.

He won’t be tilting up his head in pride,

his hair in practiced affect tossed

nor crying in a bathroom stall

his dreams in shards, his prospects lost.

He’ll walk in long-legged, languid stride

towards his desired profession

He’ll find his way in his own time

My task: maintain connection.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 30, 2011

Body Rapture

For the Turtle Dancers . . . 

Body Rapture

Let the body rapture

lead you out

beyond the tentacles of words

beyond the weights and measures of the mind

the body knows it loves, it doesn’t care

about constraints of boxes and conditions

doesn’t need permission

doesn’t need directions

has its own affection

makes its own connection

precisely tuned to every move and glance

The body rapture knows

love is pure enough to move you

in the deep perfection

of the dance.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 29, 2011

Communication

My daughter and I work with words

share phrases back and forth

shuffle clauses for clarity.

Her granddad is different.  His words

day after day, are the same —

same stories, same phrases.

Many of our words he doesn’t hear

His son says it makes little difference

even when he could hear he didn’t listen

even when he could remember

he still told the same stories.

But today

when he came home

I was digging up the garden

He said, Want me to do that?

I let him take the shovel

I steadied him

he broke up the dirt

I tossed it, with another shovel

into the pile.

He tired quickly, but joined in again soon

and we moved

in the steady language 

of working together

remembered by the body

safe from the mind’s forgetting.

We finished that job

the smooth soil

our own new story.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 28, 2011

Time Tracks

Yesterday my husband and I were walking the path around a neighborhood park, where softball games were going on, one Little League and one adult, in fancy fields with high backstops and well groomed diamonds.  I remembered a time before they remodeled the park, where I was one of a group of moms informally assembled with our kids in an impromptu pick-up game that was all about helping the kids succeed.  I was pitching, slowly, telegraphing clearly, willing the bat to connect with the ball, and it often did.  This was a game I had never played well as a child, and the kids here were also not ball players.  In that short time, sun setting in early summer evening, we all had a glow of success.  Now that scruffy, climbable backstop is gone, and the kids are mostly grown, one of them married.  And I only see the moms occasionally - years can go by between the times we casually run into each other.  This poem arose from those thoughts and images:

We move within uncomprehended rules

of what will stay and what will fall away

What’s solid ground will shift and sink, we’ll stray

No way to hedge for what we’ll win or lose

The field we played on then is gone

So, too, are all the kids we played with

We couldn’t even hold the friends we stayed with

Our life arcs intersected and moved on

Back then it seemed that we invested time

and thought one day to reap time’s golden fruit

but many never pollinated - dried on vines

of fading memories, and many lost pursuits

turn out to matter less than we had thought -

What we have now worth more than what we sought.

April 27, 2011

Bringing you down

What can dislodge you from your tree

of cool contempt, and do you need to fall

to feel connection, crashing ground to call

sharp echoes through your bones till you agree

that scornful heights are not the place to be?

No, let no crashing jar your tender bones

Instead, we’ll come with quiet, gentle hands

to wrap you in a hammock soft and grand

and bring you firmly, safely home.

For there’s no lofty place that you can climb

above the hands of Love that surely come

to every soul that’s sad, each heart that’s numb

and bring you back to your most needed rhyme

within the round of Love, in perfect time.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 26, 2011

Aftermath

It’s said, “nothing is new under the sun.”

One stupid moment — months of work undone

    Regret shrugs on a robe of anger and gets up

to storm around. Knocking down the shrines

of time together, snarling, stumbling —

hands too numb to put a thing to right

So who will save this house? What prayer

can piece together shards of broken care

can lift the tender, trampled stalks

can bind them so their heads can stand again?

Hush, hush. Lie down.  And let the bed

take over, for a time, the work you left

Surrender to the will of what compels

the roots to sprout, the seeds to lift their heads

It won’t be you who shines the rainbow through

but you will see it on your land made new.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 24, 2011

Everybody knows

the small world of everybody

has tight constraints:

what you can do

is hemmed in by

what they will think.  What you say

must fall within the ribbon of normality

and cool — that so-illusive stance

is nice, but not required.  What’s needed is

to not be weird, nor yet a type

that they can name and shame.

to be defined

outside the lines

is simply

not an option.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 24, 2011

Healing the Rift

It doesn’t matter how you set

your card house of opinions

how eloquent your arguments

how justified your feelings

The law is that they all must fall

in showers of helpless flailing

Though you may rant, you can’t forestall

their swift, colossal failing

It doesn’t matter.  When you’re done

with sputtering and grieving

a more compelling rule will dawn

will open you to its receiving:

No human posturing can be exempt

The tide of Love obliterates contempt.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 23, 2011

Ars Poetica

I’ll know it’s perfect when the sounds

go bounding down like boulders, round

and booming down the canyon – ground

reverberating. Thrumming of concatenating gong

a rising ring of echoes through the bowl:

uncompromising summons to the soul.

I’ll know it’s perfect when the sense

stands clear, invokes no arguments

but ripples - sends concentric rings against

the harps of hearts, and makes them sing, intense

essential lines on which they’ve ever grown

remembering the truth they’ve always known.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 22, 2011

The nibbled edges of my day

The native flute invokes a woodland scene

soft-warbled water, sifting sun through trees

high descant; low, soothing melodies

that move me subtly halfway into dream.

The sounds around me lull me into trance

the scenes to illustrate them build

behind my eyes, rise up with crafty skill

and bend the sounds to orchestrate their sense.

Which one came first? Before I know, I’m gone

the train of thought my will suggested — flown

Too brief for dream, the images all turn

like pages, sound and sight and touch as one

Fine workmanship - in fairy dust they’re drawn

They steal away my hours at night and dawn.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 21, 2011

The Pearl of Great Price

It opens out and opens out

and keeps on opening out

doors within doors

dimensions within dimensions

so you never take the next step

because infinity keeps unfolding

in your hands

where you are standing

and you start noticing

all the surfaces are intricately scrolled

they are flowers, they are scenes

they, too, are four dimensional

their own light sources deep within

so you embrace

the falling up into it

the opening out with it

always open

always receptive

A change of plans:

this is you now.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 19, 2011

Parenting revisited

Another one for Eric

    My love for you extends beyond all rules

I long to nourish all you’re meant to be

Why did I want to use those rigid tools

that felt instinctively unjust when used on me?

The structured reasons you should want to do things

the consequences if you disobey

and how they serve to make you feel belittled

and want to throw my edicts far away - 

How could they teach what I’ve hoped you’d discover -

the joy of moving from the spark inside

to never set your goals to please another

to find your balanced, elemental stride

to find the peace - and I think none is greater - 

of living the fiat of your creator.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 17, 2011

Arrested Spring

Tulips play

Mother May I -

The frigid day

arrests them.  They

stand, green heads pert

alert

awaiting

the permission of warmth

to step into their colors

©Wendy Mulhern

April 16, 2011

Lowering the Standard

I opened a book today that my husband gave me for Christmas years ago - Bill Moyers’ The Language of Life, a Festival of Poets.  I hadn’t really read it much at the time, but now it is intensely relevant and important to me.  Though I took many things from my day’s reading, the one I will share today is the information that a poet named William Stafford had a practice of writing a poem a day (as I do!).  And when asked what he did when he was having a bad day, he said he simply lowered his standards.

This gives me permission, and I think I need to let myself write poems that don’t aspire to goodness, to keep them and me from getting pompous.  So today I will share a “poem” about my blog stats.

My sad confession is that I often haunt my blog looking for signs of having made a connection.  There is a stats page associated with the blog, which tracks page views - how many there are, where they come from, which pages were viewed, etc.  So I was surprised today when there was a sudden spike of activity from Russia.  And last week a similar but smaller one from China.  My poem is about those spikes:

Did nineteen people read my poems in Russia?

One spike at three o’clock this afternoon?

Was it a class, something they were doing -

Could they even read it, was there a discussion?

Or does my stats page give a wrong impression - 

Perhaps it was some automated creeper

that opened up my blog but with no reader

just marched on through in mindless blind procession

I’d like to think that in some far off land

an energy connection had been made

an arc of our humanity find ground

across a gap of culture, time and space

and though I doubt this count is realistic

I must confess I’m glad for the statistic.

April 14, 2011

Love light

Love casts a light on those my eyes behold

and summons all my senses to support

and vivify the image that unfolds

impelling me to love them more and more.

All that I see of them I also feel

in lines of liquid corresponding flow

within me, tracing part for part

his hand, her cheekbone; mine, internal, glow.

They light me up like that - their smiles

send laughing waterfalls cascading

through and through me all the while

chimes of joy keep celebrating.

This reverberation, humming to my core

is what I’m here for: every day’s reward.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 13, 2011

Going the distance

How can I hope, day after day

to keep on finding things to say?

If I have touched essential grace

have laid it out so all can feel

its brightness and its deep embrace

what more, then, is there to reveal?

The  answer comes in simple clues:

Each life is noted, each is news -

each pine needle bejeweled in dew

each tulip that unveils its hue -

There’s always something new in how

each living thing proclaims its now

So I can witness, marvel, and attend

to what is now, and now will never end.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 12, 2011

City Musings

I started to compose a poem in my mind as I walked down the city streets to the basement office where I volunteer every other week.  The idea seemed good, and I had the first two lines and the framework for several more.  I thought they would come quickly back when I could sit down and write them.  But at the office other things came up, and I didn’t get to think about the poem till I got home.  And then it was something like waking up from a dream that had seemed very profound but that I couldn’t make sense of at all.  I remembered a few words but not how they came together.  After I thought I would give up, it came together, though I think it’s quite different from what was in my mind earlier:

Bully without a pulpit

I walked, entreating the collective mind

Look: who you are is not defined

by what you buy, or tastes refined

through careful choice of things designed

to show your status and proclaim

alignment with some product’s name

I stepped into the crosswalk, feeling wise

to turn from all the billboards for the prize

of seeing how much better we are known

for what we’ve striven for, what we have honed

through stretching into what the day demands

through what we make with our own hands

I liked my words - I thought they would compel

except I didn’t know who I could tell.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 11, 2011

Isaiah 52:3

ye have sold yourselves for nought. . . .  

ah, verily

we have sold ourselves for a bargain:

our communities 

     for low prices at Costco

our neighborhoods 

     for hundreds of channels on Comcast

our livelihoods 

     for cheap wares from China . . . 

sackcloth and ashes!

     for we have not been conquered

     no brave stand against the cannons

     no soul bracing acts of raw courage

     no

we just sat here.

ye have sold yourselves for nought,

and ye shall be redeemed without money.

we shall not be bought!

    we shall be redeemed

with that which can’t be bought

but can be given.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 10, 2011

End of Day

I close my eyes and ask the energy

from my industrious dogged exertion,

like tide returning to come back to me,

restore me in a slow and strong immersion.

In steady march, all of the day’s demands

required my work, persistence and attention;

I powered through them all, and though my hands

grew raw, accomplished my intention.

There was a place of stillness when I felt

a moment's rest was all that I would need

and though the space of peacefulness was well

my weary head demanded that I heed

the time of tides, that can’t be rushed, must flow

at their own pace, and when they’ve covered me, I’ll know.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 8, 2011

Liquid Mirth

Would you like some liquid mirth?

It glints in the internal sun

It splashes brightly at the simple living sounds

the ringing clink of dishes in the sink

the satisfying clack of cupboards closed

It rushes from the throats of birds

whose spring sound summons lightness

though the sun itself is hidden

Would you like some liquid mirth?

I got it from my son, who played so well

Then we were driving, and he said Don’t!

Don’t make that noise; I chortle; he says don’t

make that one either - it’s weird

But I want to make all the sounds

the clicks, the hums, the burbles

the plocks, the thwings, the brip brip brips

and the warble of my brim-full soul.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 7, 2011

For Love

You had a taste of Truth - it was enough

to waken an insatiable thirst

that made you climb a tree, and beg for more

and walk in circles through the fields and say

“Why did I never know of you before?”

So after that, you made the resolution

to drink that light until it fills you too full

to be contained within confined constraints

 - swell like a seed until the skin splits

and peels away revealing it’s not you

and never was - that what you’ve always been

is something else, made of stars and milk-white

innocence, and open eyes, so you can

break out of all that holds you in this shape

slip out of that old ego like a slim snake

and walk in nameless luminescence.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 6, 2011

A Mom’s Lament

He plays the cello suite

in a wrong tuning

The lowest string not dropped,

 each bass note

a step too high - rude barging 

into an otherwise soothing song

It is a musical joke.

He plays with his eyes closed

shifting inexorably 

towards the horizontal

from which he leveraged himself, 

with great groanings

demagnetized himself, most laboriously, 

from the computer screen

after playing, lying down with his travel guitar, 

a lament about having to rise.

He digresses to trim his fingernails

But I shall have music.  Eventual music.

It is my hope.  It would be a sweet fruit 

of weary repetitious prodding.

I am here to encourage him

to curl into his space among the animals

on the bed.  To occupy it

so it won’t pull him so quickly back.

How is it that this job belongs to me?

Or have I brought it down on my own head?

by too high expectations or by being too low key?

this daily nagging (begging) I have come to dread?

©Wendy Mulhern
April 5, 2011

Lucid Dreaming

I think I had a lucid dream, he said

I realized I was dreaming so I worked on how to fly

I fell out of that dream into another one

where I was here in bed, and you and Heather had come home.

I think I had a lucid dream, in that

a nightmarish beligerancy vanished

with hardly any memory, no caustic

bitterness deposited around my mouth

or eyes, no nagging tension at my neck

or eyebrows.  Just a liquid sweet connection

with a languid waker from deep sleep.

who said, yeah, I was just too tired

to think straight.  I’ll listen to you next time.

OK.  I didn’t buy the nightmare.  I held out

for a better dream.  And look! At least

right in this moment, here it is.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 4, 2011

Metaphysical healing

In this poem, my worlds intersect: the spiritual content of my other blog flows into this one, with some of the particular language from the practice of my faith.  I seem to be a slow learner in regard to relations with my son.  I can say that the results of my efforts, to the extent I have succeeded, have been overwhelmingly positive.  I just need to hold to the truth, re-establish it every day, overcome my temptation to do otherwise.  Not easy for me, but infinitely rewarding.

To Eric (who will never read this, at least not till he’s much older)

If I could learn how to eschew

the part in me that finds a fault in you

that feels alarm and strategizes how

to fix it - fix you - thinks you will allow

such intervention - thinks you will admit

you need to change, accept the sense of it

then I could shine a clearer light upon our day.

If I could master this most basic lesson

it would free me from the great transgression

that casts aspersions on the true creation

forgets to hold the primary relation

to see how the Creator’s work is sound.

That fact comes first, and goodness must abound

in all we are.  For that’s the only way

we’ll both be whole: that’s where my thought must stay.

April 3, 2011

Getting over it

I wrote a mournful little litany of things I was sorry for today - for botching a conversation with my son and a paint scraping job in the bathroom; for missing the game night tonight, which I wanted to attend but realized, when we were thick in paint chips and insulation dust at 6:30, that it wasn’t going to happen.  But though it made me appropriately weepy to write it, I wasn’t willing to let it stand.  This pep talk came to my rescue when I broke a fingernail.  Its rhyme and rhythm saved me.

Sorries

My sorries yawn like caverns in clouds across the sky

gray on gray, dark stretching mouths that moan and fly

and gobble joys and happy memories

and fling down rain, and petty miseries

Get over it! For what can it avail

to be caught up in all the things that fail

a missed good bye, a broken fingernail?

It’s your choice if the darkness will prevail.

So I cajole myself, for so I hope to rally

To float beyond the mournful, moping tally

of all the things I did that came to grief

(all three of them!) it is beyond belief

that you would let such trifles win the day

Go write a poem, and let them drift away.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 2, 2011