Rise By Fire

Hold your body to the flame —

you will phoenix-rise again,

this is nothing you can name —

these are your essences made plain

The burning bush is not consumed,

the burning life is fueled by learning,

steady down the steps of days

to your eternity returning

Set your sight on what you are,

glimpsed beneath your deepest hope —

the guiding lights you see afar

are nearer than you’re told

Hold your body to the flame

of all that lights and fuels your being —

this will now define your days,

becoming all you’re seeing.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 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

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

Apocalypse

We may prepare for the Apocalypse,

may prepare for many —

fortified and settled in, stocked up

and battened down

We could prepare for the Apocalypse

of flood, of fire, of drought, of cold,

yet the Apocalypse is not what’s ripped away,

but what’s revealed when everything is gone

Hence the preparation of the heart,

not to survive so much as how to be alive,

to see beyond the veil

of all the worry, judgment, dread,

to what, when all is finished, will remain.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 11, 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

Changes

The only place we’ve ever lived

is in the place where we can never die.

This isn’t what it looks like,

these days, these goals —

whatever I have thought of them before —

these changes . . . 

Now I’ll keep paying attention

to what lights us up

deep down at the source,

what makes us live and move

before we even enter all the surface fray

This isn’t what it looks like

but it is something. Indeed,

it overrides whatever I had thought —

these changes, this which never changes.

This which I may find to be enough.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 1, 2018

Unconditional

I sense that I have barely comprehended

the size of unconditional

and what it means

to be companioned in that vastness,

comforted at every step

And how it is that there’s no far away

in everpresence, no departure

from here. Space without distance,

development with no constraint of time,

nothing locked away by past or future,

everything at hand in earth and heaven.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 31, 2018

Eternity

This is how it is

living every day in the sunlight of Truth —

today as eternity,

no track record required,

just this one day as a thousand years,

just a thousand years

as one day

This is how you know

in this now

that what you are 

has always been,

even as it must be —

your shine proves eternity,

your essence proves truth.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 27, 2018

Sweeping down the centuries

Time is of no more use to me.

I’ve been forced to give it up.

From now on I will approach it broadsides,

I will move in the current

where our growing awareness of Spirit

sweeps up all the broken dreams of history,

sets to right every small and large sadness

that ever occurred,

unites us with our past and future generations

and chimes a chorus

that will echo throughout the vast eternity

where there is time no longer.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 18, 2018

Going through it

wind driven rain

whips at the house,

rain falls through me

in waves, in recurring torrents

I’m like a spring tree,

my buds paused, my limbs wet,

water following its path

along my roots

I am not melting

though it may feel like it,

the soil will receive all of this —

my leaves will use it

to open out and grow.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 17, 2018

Keepers

Be thankful for the day —

it is enough

to tuck the old man in,

to see the comfort

of soft sheets around his chin

It is enough

to have accomplished 

the simple tasks

and to have felt the soft burn

of inner fire, curling

at the base of being,

connecting us to eternity

and the truth no lies can cover

and the clear direction that it gives,

untouched by any turbulence of time,

bearing us silently

into our role

as keepers of the stars.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 9, 2017

Slow Learners

Oh, we are learning this slowly!

But maybe that’s OK. Maybe we have

plenty of time, as long as it takes

Maybe the speed of time

is a function of 

the pace of our learning.

Maybe time and learning

are both the same,

both nothing

in the scheme of eternity

Maybe we’re just finding

what we’ve always known,

and we will remember

how to take in 

all dimensions at once,

so we can see them dance around each other,

so we can dance with them.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 2, 2017

Time

Maybe the whole span of

what we call time,

its mountain ranges and its geologic tales,

the reaches and the misses,

what seems to be haphazard,

the careful plans, extensive engineering,

legacies that mark the futures

of many generations,

Maybe in the scheme of things,

all of time is just a small ripped edge,

a narrow line, the space between

the yearning and the “aha”,

desire and its fulfillment,

the longing and the saturating sweetness

of satisfaction

Maybe it doesn’t matter at all

if something was instant

or took a long, long time,

in the scheme of what we are,

the truth of what we’ve always been.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 18, 2016

Eternal

It’s time.

It’s time to pierce this bland shroud,

this heavy and impermeable sense

of being held down,

of having an internal weight

that droops my efforts ever toward inertia,

proclaiming all that's good must end

while what is bad will rumble on forever

Every live thing testifies otherwise:

Every green shoot pushes up and out

against its boundaries,

reveling in strength

turning the downward pull

into its springboard

in its eternal act of living power

Every sentient being

delights in helping others,

in striking up the magic multiplying

chords of giving joy

that flow in sweet increase from hand to hand,

that sing forever down the grateful land.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 19, 2015