Always an option

Today I thought about how

silence could be an option

in the early fading away

of light from the windows,

in the random lamplit reading

of books most often looked at but untouched

upon my shelves — basketry, house design,

Anglo-Welsh poetry, mushrooms —

I could stay silent

for this, another night like any,

not try to add any insights to the world

(as if that were what I do anyway)

I could have stayed silent,

but then there was this.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 10, 2020

Respite

In the wilting heat

the songs that come to me

are ones I’ve sung before

or heard so often forty years ago

that all the notes are etched deep in my mind

The same with words, with poems,

as lines I’ve read and loved come back to me,

along with ones I’ve written,

and the only way to find new words

is to seek shade, and the space it brings,

for leaves, and lines,

to hold themselves full.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 5, 2019

Cleaning out closets

You can fill your head with

boxes, with sheets and blankets

pulled from shelves, and musty things

that skulked around for years

You can fill your mind with tasks —

they hum along in orderly succession,

they stretch to fill the whole allotted space,

they are important, and they give

a sense of usefulness, efficiency —

they have a certain paper satisfaction

But where is the poem in all this?

Where are the gaps, the permeable surfaces

to put down roots, 

draw up the crosswise meaning?

It’s here, apparently,

though yesterday I couldn’t find it —

after I stopped, I could see it —

the rhythm, the breath of it,

the why.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 2, 2019

The closest thing to a night without a poem

Days like this

it’s a good thing

it’s not up to me

to keep myself going

I would shrivel up, no doubt,

or wander aimlessly

toward the next thing

to put in my mouth,

would stumble around

from armchair to couch

I would be hopeless according to

all standards of achievement.

But here is the marvel: 

it’s not up to me. And here

is the moral: there’s no need

to hound myself (or anyone).

Our presence and goodness

are assured. Just not by us.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 24, 2019

A Word of Advice

If you’re too tired to find your daily poem,

don’t stay up late to read a novel —

its world will trespass on your dreams,

displace you from your peaceful center

Beware the morning, then, whose overcast

may not pierce through the web that spun you in —

you’ll sit in stupor trying to remember

what gives your life its lift, how to begin …

But if you find yourself in this condition,

it’s folly to succumb to doleful doubt —

you have an easy, obvious solution —

even a silly poem can pull you out.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 19, 2018

Crisis at the Poem Front

Yesterday I thought

What if I stopped?

What if I just didn’t

write any more poems?

Why do I do this?

Who do I do it for?

What if, finally, after

almost seven years,

I’ve run out of juice?

What if, in fact,

I ran out some time ago

and the words have just been

limping along, because they’re 

used to it, and don’t really know

what else to do?

So I considered

the release of not needing

to find my daily poem,

at least, not needing to

because of some agreement

that I made

I think the words

would miss each other

if they didn’t come together.

I think I would miss them

if they were gone.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 19, 2017

Owing the World a Poem

What do I owe the world today,

if not a set of clocked-in hours of labor?

Maybe I owe it

the sight of these pink clouds

over the power lines

and the planes streaking through

loud and aglow

and the sound of children up late

now that school is out —

maybe I owe the world

my now.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 27, 2017

One Daily Poem Under the Wire

Midnight threatens

to overcome the day —

I can keep working

up to its threshold

but it will be tomorrow then

and what I accomplish

will no longer add to

today’s to dos' ta-dahs

No matter. My life cares little

about calendars these days.

I have to think hard sometimes

about what day it is.

Just me and the rhythms

of someone who’s left time behind

and the progress that scribbles

bright and rushing

outside all the lines.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 4, 2017

Fridge Poetry

It seemed hard to find a poem today, my hours having been dusted with sorting, discarding, packing; my mind pursuing something as yet too arcane to fit into a poem; my body having its own issues. But one boon to the sorting was finding, again, a little booklet in which I recorded the poetry found on the fridge, courtesy of several collections of magnetic words. It seems appropriate to share (each clump is its own poem):

from which deep music

is this delirious joy

like skin whispers

I only ask

that I may feel

eternity

mother goddess

water color

I will soar free

shake time

sing life

life

in forest sky language

swim a thousand storms

why not live

sweet surreal rain music

springs here

moon be still

nude petals shine deeply

next to my feet

all there is

is here

luscious music

sweet to create

best two play

angel please

as always

color my every vision

smoke will make a masterpiece

under fast water

falling sculpture

a wild moment of

surreal grace

essential rock

shake free of time

wanting a thousand springs

only ask an eternity together

why not live

behind the rain

music above

purple wood near

song beneath

swim soaring

over the day

life’s blue whispers

from which I rose in sky

always feel gifted

Wendy Mulhern (and maybe some others)

sometime before and including October 2007

Seeking my Daily Poem

Rhythms from people’s words

float through my drifting thought,

cadences of voices

with all the meaning

transmuted into something

that will be dreams later,

after I give up

my hold on the day

Night wants to claim me,

my eyes feel

this is a good idea.

I’m holding out for inspiration

but maybe it’s here.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 18, 2017

The Right Question

I will ask the right question

in the gentle morning

when dreams have run their course

and been forgotten

and dawn has sent its scouts ahead

and will come later

As surely as the rolling earth

will always keep a face beholding sun

I will ask the right question

and hear its true response.

©Wendy Mulhern

December 20, 2015

Squiggle

I search for inspiration

and see the bright image squiggle,

naked as a sunbeam,

upward and out of grasp

except my mind

is its medium,

so it can’t escape —

it can only

open out my sight

to where I see it

blending like heat rising,

releasing its radiance

into a greater shimmer,

bringing me there with it,

breathing the broad freedom

of communion.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 23, 2015

My Poetry

I wanted to tell you this morning

that each time I write a poem

with you in it,

each time you have shared

what was in my heart,

in my mind,

you are more present

in the landscape of my being,

in the circuit of my thoughts

When you receive my poems

you have received a gift of me

so that I hold you

in gratitude, in inner company —

I keep the thought of you

as treasure,

more for every time

that, through my poetry,

I feel I have been seen.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 22, 2015

Picking Raspberries

Picking raspberries, I consider

that writing poems is just like this sometimes —

There’s sight involved, but picking

comes down to touch most often —

a gentle grasp that doesn’t bruise the berries,

just firm enough to pull them off,

and knowing to desist if they resist too much,

to wait another day until they ripen

I stoop down to peer beneath the leaves

and spot the hanging red,

then my hand goes in almost blind

to feel if it is ready and to pick it if it is.

Some berries fall apart in my hand,

some years, some are mushy

(but not this crop)

We’ll tend them well to keep them plump

With poems I do the same thing,

with the initial spark, with words,

with images —

I move focused along the canes

and fill my basket.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 15, 2015

Night Daze

Tonight the crickets’ chorus

sets an undulating braid,

The sound of fireworks punches through it —

staccato pops and cracks, keening whistles —

I’m not sure what they’re celebrating.

Tomorrow I go home

I dreamt of writing

in a pre-poem nap

but when I woke up 

it was gone

There’s nothing in my sun-soaked head

but sleep.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 30, 2014

Thanks

Yes, we see each other

The signal that I sent across the years

(which, since it met with no response,

I’d left,

continuing to work

because I needed to,

slowly gaining prowess on my own)

Has now come back

at the right time.

Light recognizes light,

Honest dedicated effort

sees the same

And so we start to forge a higher discourse

Where we redeem the purpose of our being

So I say thanks —

Thanks for how you live your life,

thanks for what you see

thanks for the clarity

that frames your thoughts,

thanks for seeing me

Thanks for attention, instead of norms,

Thanks for the dance within the meta-forms.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 19, 2014

After Steeping Myself in the Work of Poets of Renown

Well, I may aspire

to something more exotic,

may wish to drift through mist

and leave behind some trace scent,

not quite definable

May wish to leave you feeling

here was something subtle and profound —

It moved me, though I can’t tell

what it is . . .

But at this time, it seems my pattern

is more earthbound —

My words roll and clatter

along the tracks my thoughts made

in oft repeated play

If I try to make them

say something important

They get much worse.

©Wendy Mulhern 

August 15, 2014

Special Announcement

My first collection of poems is out and available for purchase online at Amazon and CreateSpace! 

Here are the links:

Infinite Permission on Amazon

Infinite Permission on Createspace

I think you’ll enjoy the collection — the arc of the message through the poems and the startlingly synergistic art from Mellissae Lucia.  We’d love to see this book reach everyone who might find it inspiring.  If you’d be willing to review it on Amazon, that would help us a lot.  Thanks for your support.

And now for tonight’s poem:

Implicate Order

Every hidden thing

will find its way to surface

in the folding and refolding

of the necessary permutations

All the patterns possible in each design

must lay their sequences 

along the dance of time

It isn’t destiny unrolling

in a rigid line

It’s more the complex undulations of a plane

wherein no signal, however small, is lost

Though it may seem confused, distorted, tossed

by all the other waves that intersect

Each thing that is

will have its full effect.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 29, 2012

Daily Poems

Every day has a poem in it

— That little girl starting to run,

short-stringed kite two feet above her head

Her mom, walking behind her, smiling

(colors: pink, purple, red)

— That man on racing bike,

his smile denoting deep contentment —

Each of these are poems

though only briefly intersected here

Clouds dance along horizon

reminding me there’s more

than the smell of tar,

the roar of motors;

There are

Echo tunnels on the trail,

A chalk-drawn paean to Love

(now almost washed away)

And a delighted Downs boy with a dog

The sun begins to cook the day under the overcast

The coolness sighs and looks for places to lie down

The wind bears thistle fluff along

and sets it in the river

Small girls with their grandma play around

Every day has a poem in it

I only need to dip my head in

like these ducks

Reach beneath the surface,

Pull it up.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 8, 2012

An empty page

Perhaps it is a time for breathing in

Breathing in, taking in

Listening instead of saying

Having nothing to convey

Ingesting rather than creating

Letting rushing showers of stories

fall across my vision

Hearing all the sounds

and making no decision

Let the magic coalesce at other sources

Let the message be sent out

by other voices

This yawning blankness of my mind

may well be for the best

Every field, including mine

must have its time of rest.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 29, 2012