Citadel

I’m not waiting

for something to happen

(nothing ever comes about that way)

I’m coming back instead

to guard my citadel

(which, before this, I didn’t even know I had)

A citadel that I can furnish

with warm lights

and soft corners to inhabit,

with knowledge of the truth imparting sacred peace

And when it’s set, and when it’s centered,

when it’s clear,

I can invite others in,

I can bring them in to share

this all transforming calm.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 23, 2020

Quiet Mind

With eyes shut

I could be anywhere —

my mind quickly slips me

far from this parking lot —

I shift again and notice

I’m not actually on the cabin porch

nor yet in the northern meadow

with the midday brightness

that now refracts

in many flashing triangles,

shards of memories

and fallen vectored efforts

seeking to settle,

seeking a quiet mind.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 22, 2019

My Mind

I love my mind.

My mind is a field, not a particle.

My mind is not mine,

and I am not alone here

I love my Mind.

My Mind is infinite.

My Mind is not mine,

and not even exactly ours

I love the soaring flight

of light, of thought, of color,

I love imagination and analogy,

I love the resonance

that chimes us all together

in the pulsing, coursing

harmony of being

I love my Mind, our Mind.

It is the field of all being.

It is the author and the keeper

of everything we are,

and it holds us safe and whole

within its knowing.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 12, 2018

Places of Gratitude

My places of gratitude are many —

this chair, this lamp, this dark night,

comfort of companionship

and this vast realm of thought

where music can bring images

and luminous ideas can dart

in swift, branching lines,

delineate new order

and make a framework

for understanding everything.

©Wendy Mulhern

December 8, 2017

Fuel

Thoughts play in mind

like small flames

traveling along the kindling

leaving crumbling sticks behind,

licking onward to the next log

I am struck

with the abundance of fuel

and the warmth that comes

in the consideration

of the vastness of the truth

that contains our being,

the infinity of Life

in which we play.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 11, 2017

A poem that almost got away

In order to take off,

thought needed

a bit more of a runway,

enough space between the tasks

to gain continuous speed,

(the weight of thought being

ponderous as it is)

In order to be caught

thought needed to soar first,

far enough that its arc of sparks

could be seen

That was the story, at least,

that was told 

to account for the silence —

thought, of course,

made the whole thing up.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 4, 2017

Rain

Rain on the windshield,

people in the parking lot

walking with their choice of

hurried, cringing, or nonchalant

I imagine rain

soaking into their sweatshirts,

I’m hoarding warmth

as my parked car cools down

People find ways to survive

or they don’t. They find resilience,

they choose laughter, or they let rain

soak into their bones

and let their spirits be dampened

Me, I’ve done both.

It’s a choice I make

in all those times

where I’m not immediately overwhelmed

by some external magnificence,

when it’s up to me

to bring my shine into the day.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 17, 2017

Sentience

I emerge from sleep

into the bright light river

of sentience — I feel its keen flow,

delighted in presence,

poised and pleased

to cleave to its Life Source

along the rapid roaring course

of celebration and discovery

This being

is the only one that matters,

the only one that powers

the aliveness that my soul

longs for every day.

I endeavor to stay here,

bring this awareness

into my every move,

into my every breath.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 10, 2017

Harmony

Harmony lives in my house —

This I insist on,

even and especially in

the multicolored movements of thought.

I witness them converging in

towards a small collapse, a place

where disappointment could form

and sadness, where the colors

would dissolve into mud, and

other structures would raise

their mud-encrusted forms

to impose some ugly order —

resentment and its minions

But I will not have it.

Harmony lives in my house,

and the net of generosity

and sweet caring 

keeps the channels open.

We all will get what we need.

We don’t need to demand it

from each other. We all

are harmonized in the One Mind,

who gives us our full fulfillment

and our radiant peace.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 14, 2017

Business

My little mind, with all its love

held in potential, 

awaiting its permission,

awaiting right conditions,

is in the business of deferring good

It has its explanations and excuses,

it has its blame, it has its resignation,

it tells me that my joy depends

on things that happen and what others do

I choose, today, the grand act of surrender

of my mental machinations 

to the one Mind —

my partial, hesitating love

to Love, the universal and divine.

If I can stay with Mind, with Love,

that’s all I have to hold,

for Love is in the business

of turning straw to gold.

©Wendy Mulhern

December 27, 2016

No Worries

Here is how I let go

of the string of worry,

here is how I keep it

from pulling me sideways,

from making me say things 

(in my resultant wobbliness)

that make the air tense between us:

I let go by remembering

no one has ever soared

with worry on her wings,

and if we lived by worry

we couldn’t move at all

We are in Mind

and nowhere else,

and Mind knows us balanced,

and Mind designs all the spaces —

the flow of us,

the cushioning air,

the trail and all the riders on it,

and their balance and their thoughts.

It’s the nature of Mind

to be harmony — we are all expressions

of one grand idea.

We can’t fall out of it,

so we can’t crash. So there’s no place

for worry here.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 18, 2016

Traveling

We roll by each other

in our steel boxes,

bound by the road

to a similar course,

each in a separate world

(a metaphor for how we move through life)

In each car, a mind,

each mind a mirror for the infinite,

each one a pool, unsearchable in depth,

and in each depth,

an ever-burning love

In each love, an endless store of strength,

a balance weight, a source of clear direction,

the thrilling, searing certainty

of being worthy, sovereign

So this is how we save the world,

not by riding up along the road,

but in the vertical connection

that holds us, perfect, to our source.

©Wendy Mulhern

December 23, 2015

Settling Accounts

Well, in fact,

it’s not possible to waste a day

but if it were,

it might be like this:

too caught up in chores to notice

how blue the sky was, how crisp the air,

how clear the sun . . . 

Since it’s not possible to waste a day,

I’ll cash in the recollection of my moments,

I’ll pull something up from within

that wasn’t even there

(at least, not that I’d noticed)

I’ll remember

the attentiveness and power

invoked by driving

a borrowed stick shift car,

and the sweet search for humbleness

that followed a rejection,

and the glimpse — twice —

that acknowledging the hold on each identity

of the one sovereign, infinite Mind

makes a difference in the thoughts and actions

of individuals and the collective,

and it’s something I can do

today, right now.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 25, 2015

Sentience

I see my sentience

is entirely thought —

pervasive loops which constitute

my sense of being here,

of who I am

I see how easily the perturbations

(suggestions of alarm, of need to see

what I have wanted as an outcome

come to pass,

the wavering braids of hope and fear

and then the closing sentence)

can form and sway what I have called my life

But this is not my all:

These things which claim

to be the outer world,

and chance, and fate,

and what might come of me today,

are currents in the same domain of thought

In which I would be rudderless

if not for this release:

to give it up,

to still my oar,

to calm my care

and ride the stream in gratitude

everywhere.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 18, 2015

Mind Like a Steel Trap

OK.

The fierce attention

called forth by this challenge

has crested,

and I feel the bead-like pulse

in my armpits,

and the sensation that

my body lags a few steps

behind my mind

so I might stumble or fumble

or mumble

And yet the pure power surge

has forged such an incisive

trail through thought

that there is no question

how I must proceed

and there is no doubt

about the force

that sears through all obstacles

and wins its goal.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 5, 2015

Wrestling

I was wrestling my mind —

Oh, it was stubborn

and tenacious and strong.

It fought like something wild

struggling for its life.

I pried a finger up

but it grabbed back again,

harder, in another place —

It didn’t want surrender

I let it run awhile,

pacing like a caged cougar

along the old trails,

assuming, soon, the steady

disconnected trot

of one who must keep moving

but has no place to go

I challenged it: This is not

what you want, I said.

It turned to cling to me —

It would not listen

or let go

Till finally I saw

neither of us could win this battle

(so equally matched we were)

We had to give it up

for something higher,

Let ourselves, together,

be embraced,

be washed,

be tickled,

be home.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 2, 2015

photo by Jennifer Lopez-Santillana