Shimmer

In the soft damp morning I consider
(while turkeys bathe in dirt, and baby swallows
chitter when their parents swoop in)
how our whole life is just a shimmer,
just a snuggle, along the course of time

It has its arc, it has
what feel to us like struggles,
what seem to us like dramas,
complicated and drawn out

But they are just a trill, a flash,
something that comes round again,
resolves itself into the tone
of our sweet, precious essence,
triumph of a chord well played,
taste of iridescent light,
filigree of love within the song of Life.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 30, 2020

Liberation

It takes us so long
to recognize our freedom,
so well we have been trained
to look at all the reasons we are bound,
all the chains, all the conditions,
everything we think we'd have to do
to get free

And what else makes it hard
is having no idea
how we are strung along like puppets,
prods within our heads
we're made to think are our own impulse,
fears we're made to hold to as our own

Yet freedom comes.
There is no choice - its dawn
has already rolled in,
the light too strong
to let us dream for too much longer

We claim the truth,
for it is ours,
and all the complex plots dissolve,
and we step out, unbound,
to claim our own.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 29, 2020

Poem a Day

On the one hand
is the audacity of thinking
I could have something to say
almost every day

But on the other hand
is the humility
of knowing everything I share
is the fruit of listening

And the listening is not even mine -
it is given in the delight of being,
by the intricate, intimate harmony
underlying everything,
declaring itself
and causing itself to be heard.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 28, 2020

Game Over

Take back this costume,
take back this mask -
I don't want to play the oppressor
anymore

Take back these petty thoughts,
these grudging,.measuring thoughts -
I refuse to play along,
being a pawn,
my steps bedogged
by haunted looks to right and left,
hounds of rejection nipping at my heels

Let me evict the oppressor's hand
from all my views, from all my actions,
let me step forth humbly
to take the brave hand
of those who, day by day,
throw off projections marking them oppressed,
showing me, as well,
how to get free.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 27, 2020

Appliances

 The washing machine
knows better than you
how much soap to dispense
and what heat and soap and time it takes
to wash your jeans

Why should you bother
to learn these things
when the washing machine
can do it for you?

Of course its little
electronic brain
can also fry,
which is why we recommend
the extended five year warranty,
because you can't be expected
to fix these things yourself.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 25, 2020

Sharing

I haven't yet lived in a house
that birds want to fly into -
this one, being unfinished,
seems to offer enticements,
all these rafters, all these open spaces,
and the wind that makes itself at home here

These structures we make for ourselves
are not unnoticed by others -
they move in, they make a place for themselves,
as has always been intended
through all the time of living -
we make room for each other,
we share the land. 

Gateways

The gateways to where you want to be
are everywhere. You can find them
in anything that reflects light, in everything
that holds a shadow

You can feel it in the yielding,
the soft give of grace, the melting
of preconceptions into something more liquid,
more bracing

The widening of what you know
of yourself and the world,
that stretches you till you rebound,
perception soaring
to where you see with new and tender eyes,
all things now pure, unburdened from disguise.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 22, 2020

Voicing Truth

I'm striving now to learn to use the voice
that says, you don't need anything -
don't need to change,
don't need to have been born
with a different set of genes,
or different circumstances,
you don't need to earn anything,
you don't need to be punished.
What you are is just exactly
what you need to be -

I'm striving to find the voice
that knows this clear enough
that when I tell someone this truth
they will believe.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 23, 2020

Of the Earth

My boots fill up with daisies
as I walk the fields, tending trees,
my hands pick up the smell
of dock and tansy from my weeding,
they don't look very clean as I offer
handfuls of blueberries I picked

I reflect that, growing up in suburbia,
I never touched the dirtiness required
to tend the whole circle of life.
Now I am learning more
about being of the earth.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 20, 2020

Summer Starts

June suddenly starts steaming on towards solstice,
rain remembered only in the reaching roots
of grass seeds sprouting,
and the moisture in the air
that calls all plants to rise

Summer visits us in moments ripe with memory,
the feeling of the air, the taste of ice cream,
the sprint of possibilities,
the wide expanse of days,
our call to be here in witness,
to ride its spirit like breath,
to move like wind through trees.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 19, 2020

Half Nap

I roused myself from the half dream gibberish,
out of the hammock before I knew I was awake,
hammock put away before I had decided
that I was done resting

As I was just lying down,
I had been thinking,
What would it mean to live every moment
as if I might wake up at any time?
As if the whole dream could fall away
just like that -
What would I want to be noticing?

©Wendy Mulhern
June 18, 2020

Doing the Math

However many places
I have been right,
however many operations
I've worked correctly,
one thing that I don't get
will foil the whole result,
and for all my careful efforts
I'll have nothing

If, then, just now,
I find an error -
could be one of many
or the only one -
Shall I not say, Rejoice with me!
I've found my lost sheep
and am carrying it home.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 16, 2020

Truth Must Win

The world convulses.
This isn't the first time a great idea
has lit up the people,
isn't the first time a simple truth
has sat with dawn-fresh clarity
in people's minds

That which for centuries
has called itself power
will plan, as ever, to sweep it away
with no thought at all
that there's any spark
its bluster and trickery
can't blow out

I will wait quiet.
I will hold this coal,
fuel it with my heart,
I will cherish the thought
that truth must win.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 15, 2020

Little Ways

I can smile
at the little ways you find
to be yourself, to make yourself a place

These things don't need
to be judged or graded,
don't need to be negotiated

You have always wanted
someone to love you just the way you are -
I can be that person - why not?

©Wendy Mulhern
June 14, 2020

Down to the River

Let's all go down to the river -
now I understand
why people travel there to pray -
there's no stain on any of us
too set in to be washed clean

The current is strong
and the spring is so pure
that every single thing
can be absolved,
every misstep forgiven

We will look up through wet eyes
and we will see each other,
maybe for the first time,
we'll recognize, in each other, who we are -
the ones who only ever wanted
to be love.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 13, 2020

Always Here

What does it take
for me to fathom
that freedom is mine,
is ours, for the taking?

That no condition can hold us hostage,
that no concerted cavalcade of lies
can mask the present sovereignty of truth?

What does it take to notice
how, in transformation, nothing changes?
how, rather, it's a shift in focus that reveals
what always has been real
and always here.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 12, 2020

I will walk with you
in the trust that can't be broken,
with faith in the elemental
nature of our being

You may ask, why are we here?
But in that question are assumptions
about both we and here -

Step behind those
and find the answer,
not defined in the channel
down which, river-like,
we tumble and cascade,
but in the source,
unfailing, pure, and infinite,
that sends us out,
that pours us forth.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 11, 2020

Our daily birth

At the clean place
where we are all formed,
(not by history
or the ruts imposed on us)

Not formed by degradation or erosion,
but by the acclamation of our presence,
our hope, our love, our holding fast to life

In the moment we are formed,
not in the past sometime,
but here and now,

We can feel the pure Spirit that impels us -
our breath, our days, our joy,
steady fountain of our timeless being.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 9, 2020

Paradoxically

I couldn't find a poem tonight -
couldn't find it in the last glow
of daisies against the twilight,
or in the last spark of the fireplace coals,
couldn't find it despite all the magical manifestations
of light - trees bathed in sunlight, dark clouds behind,
sun shining through rain, how clouds
nestled in distant valleys
held light longer than the hills

I couldn't find it, maybe because
I was looking for something important,
forgetting that everything is.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 7, 2020

Little Happys

Well I suppose it's a good thing
not to have outgrown the little happys -
pleasure that comes from things people say -
their kindness and appreciation

And while it's good to cultivate enduring joy
that burns and burbles unconditional,
that flows up into places that need relief from pain,
that offers hope and comfort where it finds itself

It also doesn't hurt
to get a message or a package
that someone took the time to send,
that someone thought of first

It's good to be lit up by someone's efforts
and that my little happy please them too.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 6, 2020

Of Crayons and Sisterhood

For Jennifer 

Take a periwinkle crayon,
follow it down the whorl of memory
to the shiver of feeling it evoked -
not the easy love of magenta and blue-green,
but a tremulous liking,
flavor and texture
with a sliver of tears, perhaps,
a taste to grow into

Remember magenta berries,
the juicy ones with the pithy crunch
and the flavor unlike most anything -
a little sweet, a little floral,
which we ate, not knowing their name
or if they were edible,
along the high hedged path to Whitney's house

Consider sisterhood -
its bittersweet, its viney tendrils,
multicolored and intimate,
a tie to grow into.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 4, 2020

I am the one

Trying on the admission
that I am the one -
I am the one who needs to understand,
I am the one called
to make radical transformation
in my own mind,
to have my whole sense of being
reframed - to find my context
was much too small

I am the one who needs to change,
I am the one who needs to act,
I am the one who needs to listen,
listen to I Am,
listen to the One.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 3, 2020

My Task

My challenge: to not be polarized,
my challenge - to not be right.
However easy it may seem,
how smooth the path along that route,
it never has delivered me
to the new place, the place
I long to go

My challenge: not to polarize.
So vastly better to be silent
than speak the worn out words
defining tribe

Mine is not a happy tribe to have come from -
the tribe of right (more oily and insidious
than the tribe of white,
which I may righteously deplore)

My task - dip seven times in Jordan,
learn the river's lessons,
come out clean.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 2, 2020

A Stand

Stand for truth.
A partial truth will not save us -
partial truth is another term
for untruth

Yet we come with these fragments,
don't know the whole story
(trained all our lives in our blindnesses
so we can't see them)

We will be fragmented
until we insist on oneness,
which will feel at times
like tearing ourselves apart
so we can let partitions be deconstructed
so we can't cordon ourselves off
from the darkness

So we can stand
and let the light
shine through everything,
washing us clean,
showing the whole truth
and setting things right.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 1, 2020