Whether

One world separates from another

along the subtle lines

of cause and effect.

They have coincided in thought

for a long time, and now the severance

brings astonishment

It comes down to 

whether what you want

can be held hostage

to what somebody else

wants you to do,

and if it is believed

you have to pay your dues in suffering

to earn your worth for all the good you crave

Or whether you are free

to be the good you sense you are,

with no kowtow to any preconditions,

whether you must wait before you love

or whether you love first, and win the world.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 20, 2017

Morning Chat

with the (virtual) biking philosophers

Maybe nothing changes but your story,

maybe your story changes everything.

Perhaps your being is as vast as mind

and what you see as change

is just a different way of viewing it

Life, after all, is not random —

it persists at being life

in every venue where it finds itself —

everything it’s dealt

becomes its opportunity

to grow, to live, to rise, to be transformed

So through its changes

it remains the same,

although its sense of being is forever new,

and that explains both progress

and immutability

throughout the days of folks like me and you.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 27, 2017

Otherworlding

Well, I suppose we all

live in different worlds

and intersect each other

tenuously, along the meanings

of words and gestures

and a set of frames

we each call every day

And only in haphazard ways

sustain the prevalent illusion

of having a shared world

and similar perceptions

And so it’s not so strange, perhaps

to see the old man otherworlding,

slouching and nodding, sleeping in his chair,

and waking, seeming that he doesn’t see us,

or making statements

from some other when and where

I guess we choose our levels

of intersection, how much we work

on depth in our connections,

how much we try to reconcile

what others see with that which we perceive

Perhaps he’s tired of working at it

(and also never really tried)

and now he simply drifts,

or else he chose to leave.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 6, 2017

Today’s Metaphysics

That which is everywhere

can’t be pushed around,

can’t be forced, can’t be withheld,

can’t be transferred, transmitted or dispensed

That which is everything

can’t be squeezed, or thinned out,

or distorted, can’t be deficient,

can’t be subjugated

That which we are

must exist in the context

of what is everywhere and everything,

forever whole, forever shining bright,

immutable and sovereign as light.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 22, 2016

Time and Being

Everything you are, you’ve always been —

We see you through the course of time

to help us understand

The fullness of your being

is more than we’re equipped

to take in at a single view

We see the infant, and the youth,

and what we call the arc of your progression

as if each were the only you extant

Whereas, in fact, your being is

the whole of them, and more —

a thing we’d know if we saw more dimensions

We see us through the course of time

and still don’t understand — our view of life is just a scan

across the field of what we’ve always been

And nothing’s lost —

no radiance can fail to show or cease to shine,

and all we are is here for us to be.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 12, 2016

Choice

Whether or not you get to choose what happens,

you always have the choice

how you feel about it. Not to recommend

some sort of tortured mind game,

a mental strong-arming,

a set of taut constructs

But you have the choice

to stop and look,

you have the choice to not

go down the cataract

with all your wild emotions,

you have the choice to stand there

in the tumble of them

and wait

And you have the choice

to stand still

and let the pool of you

fill with your essence,

and you can use that —

all that overflowing light —

to find your way out.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 13, 2016

A Page, A Light

Though I have thought myself a figure

(as scribbled on a page)

in fact, I am the page,

and all that’s there

belongs to me —

the scribbles and the story,

and especially

the luminescence rising up behind them

whereby it can be seen that they are there

And though my body

and what I’ve called my mind

have craved to own

just a little more

of that resplendent light,

in fact, the light is me

so I can have it

with no further regimen

of self improvement

Indeed, there is no need

to look to those dark marks

for understanding and acceptance —

I can form them

as part of my expression,

but they don’t form me or contain me

I am so much bigger —

a page to tell the truth,

a light in clear reflection of its source.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 24, 2016 

Testing

The testing is entirely internal,

though I may see it

as challenges inflicted from outside,

and that which tests me

is no external judge

but just the propositions of my mind

They hold themselves up to the light

to test for truth, for purity, transparency,

and if they have a splotch or fracture,

I’ll see that flaw projected

on what my consciousness

calls my experience

Then I can choose what I believe —

the trueness of the universe

or the refraction

imposed upon my vision of my life

And what I call reality

will then determine

if I spin out and flail

against the sadnesses and failures,

or take a stand for Life’s integrity.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 1, 2016

Wishes

If I revisit

the childhood conversation

about wishes granted,

here’s what I’ve decided I’d request:

Not things I could predict,

but freshness in my days —

yes, I’d ask to be amazed,

to have my sense of everything

frequently upended,

but with the caveat

that everything be good.

It’s not too much to ask,

since good is, after all,

the one enduring fact,

the essence from which

each entity unfolds,

to which it ever yearns

Good is the kernel

of every sorry effort

and every noble gesture.

Good, on further thought,

doesn’t even need wishes.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 26, 2016

Sovereignty

(or how to heal the world)

There is no grid of time or space

through which we move,

tracked along the x axis

through the highs and lows

of daily random y’s

These lines bend at our will,

we hold them, gathered,

in our hands,

we roll them out 

through all the planes of consciousness —

they move at our command

We are not in the world, rather,

the world is in us,

so in the steadying of ourselves,

we steady it —

we calm it, reassure it, and set it

gently on its course.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 20, 2016

Divisions

Some of these lines

were drawn a long time ago

and which side you were on —

bumbling, refined,

golden-crowned, pariah,

may or may not still hold sway

within your mind

I’ve been surprised at times

to see how little difference

they have made

along the longitude of lives —

ways I’ve shined anyway

(despite predictions),

ways I’ve failed to thrive

(despite achievements)

Some of these lines

are drawn daily

in the shifting sands of internet

and in our thoughts —

benighted or enlightened,

savvy or snookered, blessed or damned

They could criss-cross us

into tiny boxes,

or perhaps we’ll see

there are so many that they cancel out

and we’re just standing,

feeling alone but really

right next to each other

on the ever-tousled but resilient shore.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 3, 2015

Of Spheres

Oh, the world is vast

and sometimes we can glimpse

how we have chosen

one small part in which to run our circles

One small set of intersections

with one small set of others,

of whose lives we see

only a fraction

And we assume others are foreign

or we assume they’re the same

and never see the whole of them

and scarcely see

the grand rolling

that moves us all, in which

all our orbits are one.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 31, 2015

I Start to Learn

I start to learn

to give up my positions,

start to learn to be the stream

flowing in the knowing

that nothing stationary

has any staying power —

nothing static is true

for more than maybe just a moment

And everything delightful

that endures, that excites,

that lends a constant presence to rely upon

is moving in the current,

being life, being dynamic,

defined in interactions and in vectors,

harmonizing forces,

stable in the action of engagement,

relevant because it’s here, alive.

©Wendy Mulhern

December 5, 2014

Releasing

When I release myself and you

from all opinions about each other,

all conclusions

that cast us static

as if we could exist

in some inert condition,

some set of predilections 

that could be measured

independent of

our hearts’ and minds’ engagement

When I release us

I can tell

This is the sparking we were made for,

This is the ever-new, dynamic

unpredetermined

soul-rush flight we can do

when we are not judged,

when we are free.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 31, 2014

All these things

The size of the arc,

the span of life,

makes no difference

Sparks flittingly ascending,

stars ponderously wheeling

ancient pools, water-carved in rock,

a mushroom chalice

All these things

live equally intensely

through the exclamation of their being

All these things

can take you with them

All they require

is your seeing

©Wendy Mulhern

October 21, 2014

Mortality

Well, dying, after all, is no big deal —

People do it all the time

It is the logical conclusion

of the primal lie

that says you can’t have

that which you most want,

that says you have to suffer,

that says you have to settle,

that says you really don’t deserve

to be the essence of yourself,

which, when realized,

brings unremitting joy

It is the lie that holds us in captivity,

Captivity which always

assigns another tyrant.

keeps us struggling in servitude,

as long as we believe it, 

with bouts of high stakes cat and mouse

played with despair

The slow or sudden pain of this

brings us towards death

(No living thing endures without its freedom)

We will choose to go there too

until the moment we become convinced

the lie has never owned us

And our own truth bears us witness

that life has boundless rounds of joy to give,

That it's our true calling

to be our wild selves fully

and then we know

we shall not die, but live.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 20, 2014