Glimmer

I can’t talk about this

because it’s too big —

bigger than a library of books

on how to find yourself, redeem yourself,

improve . . .

I must talk about this

because it’s so big —

big as the ocean’s crinkled surface,

responsive to each eddy,

every breath of wind . . . 

I touch my feet to earth.

Beyond all words, I feel 

the intersection of the circles,

every pulse connected,

tracing back to where I am enfolded,

and enfold the whole —

A glimmer of the key to everything,

big enough to satisfy my soul.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 31, 2014

Power

Listen,

You have the power:

You can always do

what you want

You are the power —

You can bring your light

into the world

You feel the power,

vibrant and decisive voice within

that lets you know

what you are here to do,

how to begin

and how to follow through

and how to win

the realization of your grandest vision.

Though you have heard real life consists

of mostly doing things your heart resists,

it is not true,

For here and now

the life that ever brings you forth

aligns you with your joy

and seals your worth.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 30, 2014

about this poem:

I was walking home from the post office this morning around seven, in the predawn light where early blue began to separate from layered gray, thinking about chem trails and surveillance and the poisoning of the earth, and I realized that these things can only be done if people do them.  And that people probably realize they don’t want to do these things, so the one thing that can heal the earth is our realizing we don’t need to do things we don’t want to do. A revolutionary thought, with far-reaching implications . . .

At the core

Oh, we are all the same,

heart of lettuce, core of onion, carrot top —

We have our generative essence,

we will grow

from this central point,

put out our leaves

and reach into the soil

for what we need

But we’re not made to thrive alone —

Our growth, beyond our spark,

requires some need our presence meets,

some gift which, when we give it,

cantilevers strength for us and them

This web we share —

How it breathes,

the giving and receiving

in ecstatic rise and fall,

how intricate its network,

how tenderly it holds us all!

©Wendy Mulhern

January 29, 2014

Today’s Work

Well, it will probably be

like other times. I pull the bell

and wait for the arrival

of the magic zip line ride.

Like other times, I’ll probably

wait a while. Sit down,

kick at little rocks, notice

ferns and moss,

look up at every sound, hoping to see

a little carriage trundling down the line.

And probably after a while

(like other times)

I’ll get up and start

to pick my way down

through the brush

and the steep slides of the ravine

to the other side,

and climb the hill myself.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 27, 2014

Mastery

We will stop seeing ourselves

as creatures of prohibition,

the ones who see themselves confined

within the narrow lines

of what’s allowed

And we will not play out

the acts of prohibition —

the tearing down, denying

and forbidding

We will understand

that the great dominion

has never been destruction,

that intelligence has a greater work

And that the building up of anything,

a life, a town, a cause,

must use the tools of life,

allowing everything 

to tumble forth and thrive,

and in its living find its integration,

teem, and be itself, and be alive.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 26, 2014

Let us gather

Let us gather

among these sweet tears,

Let us grieve,

Let this shared fountain

wash through us

with all its sadness —

Let it flow

until it clears

Let us gather

for we will be shelter

for each other, we will be

home. We will be

the way we make it through —

We’ll see each other 

and so be known.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 25, 2014

Breath

In the end

the things we’re asked to know

are the same things stones know

as they absorb their daily thermal load

and then release it slowly to the night,

a breathing that befits their time —

long and steady and calm

And what we’re asked to know

is what trees know

as they embrace the standing wave of energy,

toroidal cycling

of air and light and water,

breath of the forest, sweet and pure

We’re asked to know

the things our breathing teaches

in the constant ebb and flow

and in the depth it reaches

and the way we’re woven

into one complete design,

breath of our days,

earthbound, divine.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 24, 2014

Conundra

There may be

a hundred little pieces

that don’t fit,

that jar and grate against each other

and squeak

And they may also seem

supremely unimportant —

the solution as irrelevant

as it is hard

I can’t even ask you

to take heart,

Can’t advise that you stay

or leave

And yet I see you

in sweet ease,

in light laughter

that will bubble up

like expanding earth

and change everything,

shining your dreams till they’re true.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 23, 2014

Essence

You brought your love in

like a fresh evening wind

sweetening your hair,

giving light and lift

to your face, your eyes

And I could breathe deeper

because you were here,

because of what you brought.

You had no fear

because it wasn’t about you

or about me, or the approval

of hidden voices that held the ear

of the board of directors,

wasn’t about opinions

or someone’s rigid template for perfection

It was as simple and as radical

as truth. That which can’t

be argued down

because it stands

in its own exquisite essence

ever renewed

from above, from within.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 22, 2014

Warble

Then one day,

unexpected and welcome

as robin song,

came your bright warble

into my life again

This time I knew

not to expect anything,

not to set my plans

based on your timing,

not to put weight down

on the joy you offer,

but simply to delight

in your ephemeral gold.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 21, 2014

Touched

In feeding we are fed,

In meeting we are met,

In every act of willingness

to come forth empty to the touch point,

we are filled

The fountain rises bubbling

from the awe-struck rock,

The flames burst out

from the friction’s spark,

The inspiration rushes

suddenly and steadily

into the open space

prepared by humbleness

for great paths of wind

sweeping into the deepest chambers,

touching the quick,

igniting swift

life fire within.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 20, 2014

Flash Flood

In retrospect

it all seems so familiar —

the heady feeling of approaching mastery,

the sense of having found a solid answer

and the immediate response

of some overwhelming inundation —

a storm in my internal weather,

an interpersonal nor’easter,

or some flash flood to carry off

all my pat conclusions,

forcing me to let myself be washed through,

re-oriented, stripped of all pretensions,

surrendering, as ever,

to the larger wisdom

to clarify my sense

and make me new.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 19, 2014

Work Party

Afterwards, we drove up through

the scattered, shattered landscape,

houses like detritus flung against the fences

of suburban grids,

the actual people

clinging for survival

to the few pursuits that patch

their massive loneliness,

and maybe they don’t even know

the tide has gone out on their sustenance . . .

We thought about city repair,

and the work seemed so massive —

to create a structure

that belongs to us

and not the advertisers and investors.

But we have begun:

In this day we worked together

moving earth, transplanting hope

(represented here by many strawberries),

making connections which, with care

will spread in a great mat

and bear its fruit where everyone can share.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 18, 2014

What does your heart want?

What does your heart want?

This one thing you can answer

without words, without posture,

without a sense of needing to be right

What your heart wants now

is how you’ll know

what to do. No definitions of yourself,

based on observations or conjectures

or the self-filtered opinions of your fellows,

have any clue

What does your heart want?

When asked, your heart will answer

in the impulse of a movement,

in the wisdom of the moment

and you’ll know yourself

by following its truth.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 17, 2014

Naming it

Oh, I have been fooled

so many times,

so nearly constantly —

Cowed by an unnamed fog

to fail to move

(lest in moving I should fail),

to fail to see

(lest I see something that would wake me 

to the need to move)

But now I will name the fog

and feel the fear roll off

in great waves,

billowing and blowing and dispersing

And I will stand

in new-created day.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 15, 2014

Tuning

In this vision,

the antelopes are tuned

into existence,

huge waves of them

rolling in and out of

atmospheric haze,

keenly aware of their

sharp pounding against the ground

in the rolling rhythm of multitude

and the strong smell of each other

and the heat and dust

and the surging imperative importance

of life, this now 

in which they run.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 14, 2014

Almost Napping

In my not quite dreaming state

I felt like another person,

someone who was sleeping on my other side,

someone who had another stairway,

chocolate colored, smooth like pudding,

that she could climb

to another story.

The draft on my back

that kept me awake

also made me feel alive —

small bursts of excitement

at possibilities of places to fly,

people to be,

buzzing through my shifting sense of self . . .

My daily window of belief —

How small it is!

How infinite the plane

in which my life can play!

©Wendy Mulhern

January 14, 2014

Secret Spring

To Edward

Come here again

and enter

this inner pool of me,

which, when you touch,

comes real

and I can go there, too —

Quench myself deeply,

Immerse myself

in what will glow afterwards

on my whole skin 

and in the deep breaths I take,

an unnamed satisfaction

that fills up the entire void

amazingly —

that huge chasm

with one drop.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 12, 2013

To Sunny

No, please —

(as I see you from afar,

drifting down the currents

of someone’s strenuous persuasion)

Remember what you had —

Remember how we both 

filled with that so-tangible light,

heart-homed, rising more massively

than magma,

shining through our eyes,

making that visiting booth a lantern

that poured its brightness into all my life.

I know I always went away euphoric,

my joy so well fed,

my faith so anchored

by your stand for truth.

How can you forget?

How can you leave that light

for cold logic, dry texts,

and an old excluding story?

Come back —

(I ask you, knowing

I have no traction

except the hope we planted together

which has spread into a great field

in the time you’ve been gone.)

©Wendy Mulhern

January 11, 2014

Resurfacing

Twice today I finished typing

and hit the “send” button,

and noticed that my heart was sounding

that homing drum,

that turning thump

that signified

travel to altered states,

passage through some narrow place,

(speed-squeezed along the airfoil,

pulled through the lift

of the attenuated pressure)

the re-emerging into normal day

requiring decompression,

proof that I had touched the table

of some deep-lying truth.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 10, 2014

Coming of Age

May you emerge bravely

from that tight, sad place

which breeds such desperate loneliness

in the family-sized scrabble

to be seen, to find respect

(the sense of home

so compromised by struggle)

It might be best

for you each to forge your way alone —

leave the family voices

behind for a while —

The love is there,

but its application

is an advanced problem —

better to start with the relative ease

of friendly strangers . . .

May you invent yourselves —

find a new face that will

let you give voice

to who you’ve always been

but haven’t dared express,

May the broad sky embrace your courage,

May you gain comfort

in the arms of new-found friends.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 9, 2014

Passage

Hard walking, this,

as among the rolly stones along the beach —

worse, for sharp edges reach to snag,

and mire beneath them

is often quick, and my foot

sinks down unexpectedly,

and no step can be sure

But I will keep walking,

I will not stop for 

all the cluttered claims of pain

or the searing cold of sudden doubt

of things I’d held so sure

This much is clear —

The act of moving is itself a strength,

and little joys still shine

from unexpected places,

and the investment over many years

of what I work to carry —

attention, faith, discipline —

will pull me through.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 8, 2014

Nexus

At any moment,

you can be

the spark point of divinity,

the nexus of reflection,

the place where the God light

touches down

between you and another.

You can be willing,

which makes you

a tuner, an amplifier

for the ever present music

that stirs your inner infinity

and brings it up —

an offering

that unites you both in blessing

and carries your sudden comprehension

down the bright living stream of life.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 6, 2014

Particulars

In the real world,

particulars matter —

inches and angles,

proportion and timing,

and, of all the people

you could have been with,

who it actually is.

In real love,

particulars matter,

but they are not metered or weighed

like exacting alchemical recipes.

Instead, each of these 

very idiosyncratic things

becomes an astonishing bright point,

a hitherto unimagined

touch of perfection

that had to be so —

just precisely the way it is.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 5, 2014

Becoming Real

We start to consider

what it will take to become real,

what it will take to release ourselves

from the role in the story

in which we have no power

to infuse the structure

with our integrity,

no power to ensure

our livelihood is built on justice.

We will become real

because we do have power.

We must build our world from scratch

because it can be right,

and we’re not living

till we own

all the consequences

of our actions,

till they reflect

our natural, steady,

all-embracing care.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 4, 2014

True Words

It seemed she had forgotten them,

the way they fell, in random sequence

like raindrops shaken

from a branch

into a pond

(the ripples moving out silently

to intersect noiselessly,

patterns of expanding circles

enveloping each other)

They seemed to fall without intent,

and yet,

in the moments following,

the melody they made

(repeating and inverting,

echoing and spreading)

kept on reverberating

till their meaning

and their message

had made themselves

indelibly clear.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 3, 2014

Trusted

We will ride home

across golden meadows,

the gracious sun glowing at our coming,

our shadows stretching royal

along the welcome road;

We will ride home

supported by the very air,

caressed by the attending breeze.

We have done well,

as was decreed at our creating;

We have been

exactly as we were intended.

This fulfillment

comes from something higher

than our forms can comprehend,

this victory

our creator’s gift to us

of the particulars

of our design

We will ride home

as was written and is now enacted,

in the rich ease of being trusted.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 2, 2014

The Work Before Us

If there is one key,

it still must be applied

endlessly,

still must be used

to unlock each moment,

to focus perception,

to map the principle

on the terrain of the day

If there is a grand design,

it still must be lived,

breathed into, wrought,

in the hum of heart vibrations

down the course of awareness.

We can plan, we can understand,

but we also,

in the demand of every hour,

are called upon to be.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 1, 2014