Instant Vision

In the instant vision

I saw the way your touch

took its place

in the work of restoring

the radiating order —

how it gave everyone

a key thing they needed

to relax in inner peace

and look up

I saw it as a token

for how we each

will find our place

and fill in the grand design.

Broken filaments will twine themselves

back together

and the whole world 

will light up.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 4, 2020

Picture

Your being gone

tells me acutely

all this is dream,

all this is dream

I see its edges —

see where the tapestry

meets the loom,

the threads I chose,

how they were woven,

how they have made

what is depicted here

It isn’t sorrow

so much as recognition —

how what I thought and feared

became this picture,

and from this standpoint

my hope is greater

that I will see, sometime,

all that is real.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 14, 2019

Imagining

I’m imagining us, not too long hence,

walking hand in hand

though in the vision

it’s more like streaming light,

all of us grateful

to have been brought together

I imagine us streaming like that

all the time — then I consider

you will have others, too,

others to share and celebrate

and so will we

and the whole thing

will be so much grander

than I can think up

So I’ll just bask in the warmth of it,

how it comforts me and holds me up

right here and now.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 10, 2019

Mourning Song

I have a bag of tears

somewhere in my head,

I feel it jiggle with the bumps along the road,

maybe I’ll take it out

and drink some down,

water my memories

Oh my sweetest love,

I miss you in my future,

I miss your presence, too.

The water comes and takes away my footprints,

something like that sometime may take me, too

I found a feather

amidst my sobs along the sand,

so small and perfect —

I smoothed it with my hand,

and as I always do

I had to take it for a sign

I had to listen for your presence in my mind

“Didn’t I show you?” you said —

I answered, “yes, you did.”

“Then you will take to heart

that light-filled vision.

Your heaviness is like those clumps of snow

disappearing, dense because they’re melting.

“Take that feather

and learn to fly sometime,

get ready

to leave it all behind, 

not that you’re going anywhere,

just being redefined —

that’s how I’ll see you on the other side.”

©Wendy Mulhern

February 21, 2019

No Matter What

In the end we will find

we have not been betrayed

by our choices. We won’t come to wish

we had known better

and done something else,

even when vast scenarios

play themselves out — if only …

Our coming into ourselves

is not a matter of chance, 

of choice, any more than is

the river’s course

or the return of waves

back along their cycle at the shore

We’ll meet again — I’m certain —

We’ll celebrate the beauty of our lives,

the tender light we each shed

on the world and on each other

in every place where we were meant to shine,

undimmed by how we dipped our threads  through time.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 24, 2019

Missing Someone

Something leaps up quick

behind my eyes. It could be tears,

the slow sting of memories,

could be frustration,

but every time I head down that path,

it seems I end up

in the same place

I taste that missing someone

is bittersweet. The sweetness

is indeed a potent force,

the sorrow seeping slightly after,

not overwhelming the brightness

but softening it.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 17, 2019

Bars

Though you may fall and fall

through the bars of memory,

hitting at moments, going back and down

Though you may feel

striped beyond redemption,

branded by the light and dark,

strobed to instability

You cannot fail.

This is not about you —

it’s about your Maker,

and your Maker knows you whole.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 31, 2018

Heather at prayer time

Blessed and at peace

in the sweet time of closure,

end of day, work done,

I feel you near me,

droll and kind

We have come along this way together,

you, of late, making your presence known

as light, as gentle impulse,

as patient humor at my dim grasp

of what you know so well

We will be together

now and continually,

and more fully,

the more I comprehend.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 24, 2018

Feathers

I hold you as a frame,

as branches frame a far off scene,

as a path frames the woods,

showing the exquisite composition

of the view

and turkeys, browsing every day

along that path, frame the afternoon

I see feathers. They fall from the sky

or are found, in delicate perfection,

along a road, beside the lake.

I take them as signs.

I think of you every day.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 31, 2018

Here and Hereafter

You’re looking for connection

in a cosmic sense,

like a lost lover in a story,

a lost father actually,

seeking his daughter

across oceans, across skies

It’s archetypal

and it opens up the portals

into other worlds —

your longing has already

crossed the bridge

so you can’t live easy here

Can’t confine yourself,

have to accept that you’ve expanded,

have to learn to move and feel

in the world where she is,

must be reunited

in the larger sphere.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 19, 2018

Still talking to Heather

Here is a thing that is beautiful:

your life, and what it proved,

what it establishes, even now —

that no one ever has to think

their presence is expendable,

their friendship unneeded 

or unwanted

You are here

with your ready hug

and your deep empathy,

and you have showed us

that no one needs to wait to love

and no one has to wait

to be beloved

So we go  back along the weaving of a life,

the places in the past where strands have tangled,

we pick them up and lay them back in place

gently and deftly, as your hands always moved

We set things right

all along the years, 

we feel in doing this

that you are here.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 8, 2018

Aftershock

Nobody knew the right thing to do.

Lots of people would have had stuff to say,

opinions on appropriate directions

Where was my intuition?

Why had I not been honing it through many years?

How could I have thought

it was unreachable or optional?

If I had known better,

could I have done better?

If I had done better

where might we be?

This wave comes over me and passes through

and in its ebb I feel again

how I was grounded.

There will be other waves —

when they recede

the light will gleam again along the sheening sand.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 20, 2018

Heather’s Day

When I can remember

how time turns out to be

nothing at all,

how the wholeness of you

was complete before we knew you,

continued so, all throughout that span

and is so now,

then I can feel

the joy of your being

that touched so many moments

and blessed so many hearts

so thoroughly, then as now,

and I can know

a similar purpose

attends each of us.

Your light can still

guide us there.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 7, 2018

As we move on

You will bring us joy every day,

long beyond the tears,

joy of presence, joy of spirit,

joy of every sweet thing

we learn from you

You still bring us

the hum of strong connection,

the swift running of emotion

and the sense of how important

all this is. Not schemes and plans

but simple daily being with each other,

you still teach us

every time we greet you in our hearts.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 26, 2018

When we meet again

We know you will go on,

we know you will keep learning,

and we can consider

that you will share 

your inspirations and your joys with us,

just as you did before

We will go on,

we will keep learning,

so we’ll have things to share

next time we come together,

when we meet again.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 4, 2018