Ready to launch

Just now, walking back from next door,

(five days in and none too soon)

it felt like the new year. Something about

the cold air, maybe,

or the gibbous moon,

something about the clarity of the dark sky

Quick as the steps through the dark,

well known enough that I wouldn’t trip

on the rough ground,

I felt a sort of whirring,

a clicking in of hope, of stamina —

I looked up — something inside said

OK, I’m ready,

ready to launch.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 5, 2020

Year’s End

We approach the year’s end

as uncelebrating

as every brown leaf

that blows along the ground,

as every squirrel that scuffles

among the leaves,

as every insect sleeping in its dried up stalk,

as all the crows that have gone home by now

It’s just one day into the next,

the rain, the fog, the winter light,

the stillness of the evening,

the morning’s breath

In other times, in other energies,

we made a mark here,

found some significance,

some grand design for change,

but this time round we’re flying low,

conserving strength,

hugging the curve of darkness

till the light returns.

©Wendy Mulhern

December 31, 2019

Transition Time

My sense of beauty is enchanted

by this transition time

where windows show

the view and the reflection

at the same strength

and illustrate

things that go through each other —

inhabit the same space

without touching,

move according to their own lights,

their own laws —

coexisting

only in the eyes and minds

of those observing.

©Wendy Mulhern

December 18, 2019

Swallowed

And if we are swallowed

we will go down in grace,

we will go down doing

what we’ve been called to do

If we are swallowed

(by climate change, 

by civil dissolution)

we may get three days,

three nights,

in the belly of a fish

to reset what we know

Maybe we’ll wake up

in a different place,

or maybe we’ll be here

with the same questions

We will pay our vows,

we will give back what we owe,

we”ll take this adventure

right down to the core.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 21, 2019

The World of People

Everywhere we stopped,

I wanted to eavesdrop,

wanted to throw myself

into the current

of other people’s lives,

wanted to feel

whatever it was they were feeling,

though I never really could quite hear

Out on the land

I am alive to the sounds

of geese and ravens,

turkeys, owls, the cycles

of water, of the seasons,

and the tutelage of Spirit,

my mind cleaving eager

to what it teaches

The world of people

drifts so far away,

I forget the goals, the games …

and though I don’t know

if I’ll ever play again,

I still, it seems, am drawn to watch.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 21, 2019

Another point of leaving

I take this ride

fueled by spring —

by blossom scent and balmy air

I hit against the memories

along the road — some time it’s been

since last I traveled here

I’m brought up short

by change — holes in the tree scape,

boxy buildings where they were —

Surprised again by how a gap

can suddenly unhook the tendrils of a place

and make it mine no more.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 2, 2019

100 Mile Bakery

Days are getting colder —

wind shifts the sun between radiant and bleak,

my face feels the glow of heat

from fires and indoor furnaces

Here at the bakery

amid the generosity of pies,

I imagine holidays,

bringing forth a steaming offering

suffused in gratitude

The place, the faces

are undetermined

but I can hope

Life will provide

all the needed elements

for the occasion,

all that will be given and received.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 10, 2018

A New Life

Though I see light all around me,

it’s still my time (it seems)

to walk in silence

There may never be a time where I say

look, this is the way to do it —

by the time I get there

everybody else will be there, too.

That would be fine with me —

I’d love to never tell anybody anything again

Maybe instead we’ll just

build a new life for ourselves,

here on the land —

a life that offers shelter and encouragement

for those who need this place, this light, this time,

for those who, for their needing, we will need.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 20, 2018

Life Line

I don’t even wish

I had understood these things sooner —

they render such desires irrelevant.

Loss is gain, life propels us forward

I have clearly reached the place

of the divide of my life line

written on my right hand (not my left)

that I had wondered at since childhood,

told myself maybe the left is what counts for me,

being left handed. Maybe palm lines

mean nothing

In any case it doesn’t matter.

There are no circumstances which

avoiding would release me

from the journey I’ve been given,

no failure on my part which could deprive me

of the path where I’ve been sent.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 13, 2018

Tectonic

The aftermath of this momentous shift

has me rethinking

all the well worn habits of my thought,

noticing the places I have drifted,

how my feet don’t seem to quite touch down

The day hums along its course,

people meet and plan —

their life arcs are as perfect

as the cause that runs them.

And what is misaligned

will shift and come together,

smooth or volcanic,

it doesn’t matter

Just like me, just like my finding

that though I crash through pain,

I do not stay there, and everything

that comes to me can be redeemed.

It may take time, but time is not the factor —

it will take place,

it will be all that’s ever been.

©Wendy Mulhern

June 11, 2018

After the rain

These flowers bloom

even if their stems bow down,

even if their faces hit the soil

and their petals

begin to commune

with the ground, with the turning

of everything back

to the place of starting over,

humble and dark and untroubled

by being anything with a name,

anything but ready

for the things 

whose time has come to begin.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 30, 2018

Time, and times, and half a time

The heaping apple cart
tips over, the rolling hopes and expectations
jostle and fall,
bounce along roads,
lost to us now

We  can’t even begin
to gather them back,
and the cart is broken anyway,
one wheel following the apples down
careening and ringing like a coin

And it makes no sense to us
to go back, to start over —
What would it be to us, at this point?
So in the aftermath
we wait to be lifted,
our lives to be borne
along a different arc.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2018

Moving out

We will walk out of that house

and maybe leave the sadness behind,

let it become the emptiness

that calls out to another family

Let them imagine

filling the space,

growing up into it,

finding its secrets

and making their own

while we walk

into our new life

surprisingly unencumbered.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 24, 2018

Settled

Peaceful as evening,

as a fire-warmed house

and brisk fresh air outside,

low crescent moon 

among the branches

Peaceful as being clean

after a hard day’s work,

this glow has settled over me

It lets me know

there never was a way

I could fail at my life,

foolish though I may have been,

innocent as I may ever be

All I’ve been given

was given with love,

and I have received it

with enough grace

that I can feel where it comes from.

I can receive it

as deeply as this peace.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 22, 2018

Moving House

In these first days

I take a lot of time

teaching myself

where things go

In these last days

I grow more ruthless

about letting things go

In the stretch of memory

my mind inhabits

at all the moments in between,

I feel content with how it’s all played out —

what I have done, what I have been

Funny how I find happiness

not along the lines of time

but in the light the present casts

into the chambers of my mind.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 21, 2017

Playing House

What does it mean for us,

this mode, where every day

feels like the weekend?

— a weekend that we’ve filled

with many tasks, a mode

of casual forgetting

what any other sectors of the world are doing

It feels like play time —

playing house, playing

let’s figure out how we’ll live,

let’s make new path habits

for our movement

At some time we’ll need to look up

and reconsider where we fit in,

how our days contribute

to the greater good. For now it’s something

to just be happy

as we work these little problems out.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 16, 2018

Change

I have not changed

but I have cycled round again

like tree rings, layer on layer of growth,

branching upon branching

I have not changed

but I have pulled the veil away

layer by layer,

coming towards a clearer focus

All this time I thought that I was changing

but that was part of me —

the ever hopeful slant,

the sense of progress

which has come with me

like my hands, my eyebrows

And I will not change

until the final veil’s lifting

shows what I have always been,

changing me all the way back

through my past, and showing how

I have never changed.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 12, 2018

Plunge

We have moved from the place

of hopeful milling about,

of waiting liquid at the lip

of some great movement

(the general goodwill of our presence

bright enough to make us feel at one)

Almost unthinking, we have plunged

along the run life set for us —

maybe we thought it was a choice,

perhaps we only noticed

by the coursing of our fluids,

by the pounding force

of that which bore us,

that, indeed, we’ve moved along

And that the quiet pool

in which we hoped and waited

(and chafed at our incompetence

to stir it up)

will not be seeing us again

for a long time

Who knows where all the others are

and where their rapids bear them

and if we’ll meet again,

changed and unchanged

at the waiting sea?

©Wendy Mulhern

January 1, 2018