Traveling Smiles

The flight is full. I fill my soul

with comfort of humanity.

Some smiles are used to sell things,

but the ones caught here,

in the lines, the waiting,

the shifting into place —

these are free,

they sparkle three dimensions,

they reach deep

We can be herded and jostled,

scanned and screened and patted down,

but when we can smile to each other,

we keep our liberty.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 29, 2019

Wings of the Morning

Barely home, and we’re flying again,

touch and go, capture and release,

yet something else, when we consider

our progress down the ever flowing stream

We home in on home each day,

each day, we find it new,

and if we’re lost on any given evening,

there still is time to settle in,

to find our place

And in the morning, off on new adventure,

we’ll know we can touch home at any time,

home in the kindly tended refuge

of being known in ever-present Mind.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 2, 2019

After a long day

All I want to do

is close my eyes

and let the images

that wait around the edges

come rushing in,

shifting and babbling

in their strange gibberish

that will focus into some kind of sense

and tell their fleeting stories

when passing through the filters of my dreams.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 28, 2019

Every Human Face

Every human face,

every packed for travel,

masked to the public,

spilling secrets anyway

human face

has its own center, 

its own world,

each with its maps and longings,

its paths and landmarks,

hopes and strategies

And no matter what stories

they tell themselves

and no matter what anyone thinks,

each world is turning

with an order and a harmony

we humans hardly notice,

though it hums through all our moments

and keeps us here, alive.

©Wendy Mulhern

December 11, 2018

Taking the Train

We have come so far

along this haphazard path,

our footsteps not following

what we thought held our gaze,

our gaze, it turns out, being

too distracted and unfocused

to draw us to our hoped-for destinations

We will take the train —

its paths are laid down,

we don’t need to determine every step.

We’ll arrive where it takes us,

and if our lives feel unmoored, uprooted,

we won’t notice that so much

as long as we are moving.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 16, 2018

The Road Home

The road home was clear —

red lights streaming on ahead

but not too many,

no fog, no rain,

music to soothe

and some to keep us wide awake,

navigating traffic, hills, and bends

The road home is clear.

(We’ve learned, for now,

not to talk about it much —

it’s solo, after all,

and not negotiated)

When we arrive,

in some sense, in some aspect,

we may share with each other

what we have gained.

The road home

may not be always clear,

but we will own it,

we will persevere.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 12, 2018

Illusions

On the train again —

rolling motion, light and landscape,

fast change of parallax

lulling and nourishing

I take in

the illusion of movement

and the fact of stillness,

of being always here

riding along in the illusion of time

where neither past nor future

has any say in the unfolding

of the gifts of now.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 2, 2018

Orange Line

And if the train cars

pass through a shadow,

its shape rolling undisturbed

across each clump of passengers,

if the train rattles through light and darkness

clattering to a stop at the stations

and the passengers are unconcerned

by the shifting light

So may my course be,

and let me sway with the turns and the clatters,

unconcerned by what we pass through

on the way to our destination.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 11, 2018

Arriving

Dozing into the arrival

at our land, passing between

cliffs of clouds and blue banked sky,

needed desired rain

and needed desired sun

and the question of which

would attend our arrival

Eyes closed, the landscape still rolled out,

the narration borrowed

from some other world:

“They grasped each other 

by their suppositions,”

I heard, before opening my eyes

The sun shone through the rain,

mist rose up from the road

and blew across. The dream

was also worth watching

after the long trundle,

blurring the question

of where, exactly,

we were arriving.

©Wendy Mulhern

September 18, 2017

Traveling

Riding through worlds

in concentric bubbles —

bubble of sound,

bubble of thought,

(poetry read against

music receding as images rise)

bubble of fuselage,

bubble of sky

enclosing patchwork earth

and lakes reflecting clouds

We traverse time collectively,

each of us cocooned 

in our strategies

to pass through untouched

to the other side.

©Wendy Mulhern

July 13, 2016

Night Travel

In the absence of pillows

and space to stretch out,

I still traveled well,

in the company of angels,

in the comfort of belonging

wherever I was,

richly entertained

with memories and gratitude

for what I’m learning,

and eyes to see the kindness of others

and their joys,

and the freedom

that tucks me in with all the space around me,

charging all with potent portent,

setting me down at journey’s end,

perpetually home.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 11, 2015

Chautauqua, Boulder

The temperature shifts quickly with the wind

which now blows dry leaves,

in soft, autumn-scented rustling,

down the street

The leaves that haven’t fallen

soak sun, silent and supple,

butter-smooth against

the china sky

And in between the times

when the industrious homeowner

wields his leaf blower,

It’s quiet, and I hear crickets

When the sun goes down

behind the Flatirons

I’ll seek warmth inside,

Settle, like nestled leaves,

into the evening.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 29, 2014

Preparing for Departure

There is a pacing

that falls shy of grace,

caught up short

on either side of waiting,

the quick skip effort

to align my step

with the gliding blocks of time

that we must mount

to reach our destination

So many back and forths

along the rushing skitter

and the pauses noticing

there’s plenty of time,

time to wait for things to charge,

time to breathe,

time we can’t apply, however,

to the final flurry

of all the things that have to happen

just before we leave.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 8, 2014

Resurfacing

Twice today I finished typing

and hit the “send” button,

and noticed that my heart was sounding

that homing drum,

that turning thump

that signified

travel to altered states,

passage through some narrow place,

(speed-squeezed along the airfoil,

pulled through the lift

of the attenuated pressure)

the re-emerging into normal day

requiring decompression,

proof that I had touched the table

of some deep-lying truth.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 10, 2014

Logan Airport — Ground Transportation

Certain things can be written

in the roar of the airport terminal

where buses wheeze and screech

in the echoing concrete beneath the interchange.

The words are not soft,

though there’s a calmness in our waiting

and good-naturedness in others

in this slowing space

along the disparate trajectories of travel.

It’s too loud and hard

amid the engines and the beeping carts

to find an outward peace —

It is a time to patiently endure,

a din to send my focus inward.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 27, 2013

Cipher

What kind of day can leave me

 at the end

without a single thought?

— A day of traveling —

of packing up and leaving

— car for plane, plane for car,

car for home

A time to wait, then move —

Wait for lines

Wait for land to turn in panorama 

underneath the plane

Wait for our ride, 

wait for traffic . . .

A day in which I thought I glimpsed

the key to everything —

to my whole life

and life for all of us —

the end to all the troubles 

that have haunted us

A moment where it seemed so clear

and yet I had no words

except “of course”

— a thing I’ve seen before

and so can wait

to have come clear again.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 6, 2012

Being Here

(Mid August, Vineyard Haven)

Cardinal swoops over the roof

Chickadee perches on the screen

Behind the songbirds’ companionable chatter,

Motors roar — boats and planes

Voices rise across the water

Metal masts clang in distant wakes

Smell of onions cooking drifts up from the kitchen

Pale clouds drift across the languid sky

Trees and pond stand still in windless afternoon

There’s space enough between the sounds

for each to take their turn

Later come the crickets

till the soft warm rain silences them

Though it can’t silence

the beat of party drums and tunes

and dance laughter

from the town across the pond.

©Wendy Mulhern

August 15, 2012

At a roadside stand

You can weave rainbows

into your work

its beauty

and yours

will shine as reflections

of each other

You can weave quetzals

and flowers

in the tradition of your grandmother

but with your own flair

hidden there

in that dark and crowded stall

hung so thickly

with tapestries

in impossibly bright colors

we entered to look

and you appeared shyly

third person we’d seen

emerge from the shadow

You said, “You like? This my work.”

You and your weaving

lit up that place

so now we have

one of your rainbows

and, reflected, the memory

of your charming smile.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 3, 2012

Trip’s end

Lazy as lizards

in wilting heat

we wait

The fans twirl

Time has shifted gears

as we descend:

Loud, hot, slow rumble

of our trip’s approaching end

Roads are shorter, returning —

Signs and sights less strange

And as we travel back, we see

how much we’ve changed

how much we’ve grown

how much we’ve done

So much experience

we’ve crammed

in this small span of time

Tomorrow we’ll arrive at home

We’ll sleep, and then unpack our clothes

Allow the normal tendrils once again

to wrap us in the patterns of our days

Much later, over weeks and months

We still will be unpacking

perspectives, images, connections, loves

new things to share, new family to be tracking

We still will be considering

how much there is to learn

And now will be imagining

our next return.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 1, 2012