Love is a Decision

Feelings are so fickle

Love is much more than that

Love is a decision

You may wander

into the room of oneness

where you see the wonder

of infinite connection

You may want to match

all your points of unity

To line them up

one along another

and follow the diverging vectors

out to new dimensions

broadening the scope of who you are

You may try

to anchor down your feelings in reality

Negotiate a steady reciprocity

And if you don’t succeed

or if you do but later it becomes unsprung

Your feelings will not hold you there

They turn around, or simply float away

Love is much more than that

You may wander any day

into a room of knowing oneness

Love is the decision

to stay.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 8, 2012

Idols

Winds of Spirit

Sweep my thought

It’s time to cast out idols

Those who ask for time

Those who ask for blood

Those who ask for tiresome daily ritual

Who say they have the power

to save my sorry life

or, if I fail to worship,

occasion my demise

But they know nothing, and their mouths can’t speak

The life they offer is anemic, weak

And Spirit shows me, right here, what I am

Exposing all their noxious threats as sham

I will not worship

the god of appearances

I will not worship

the god of social norms

I will not worship

the god of shopping bargains

I will not worship

the god of health concerns

Winds of Spirit, sweep my soul

for I am made to worship 

what is true and whole

That frames the space for all that’s free and wild

And holds us each as Life’s untrammeled child.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 6, 2012

(background music: Max Richter, "Haunted Ocean")

The nature of my needed lighter touch

(in nurturing the music in my son)

Today I saw music

as it lit

(iridescent angel)

on the tip of sound

Tracing its bright melody and swift delight

Sending its rich pulsing through the ground

Today I see that music

doesn’t come at coarse commands

of sharp regimentation

nor years of dogged discipline and work

For, sunken under critical dismissal

How can the magic of the sound emerge?

But rather, music rises from

the gentle kiss of close connection

of the grace that is one’s being

with the grace that is the song

A lighting in the joy of it

A natural touching down

A cross-time current drawing out the tones

of all that’s beautiful in kindred souls

My job then: to protect

the sphere of space in which the music can appear

To let it grow by feeding it

with light and approbation

so it’s free to flit and choose to land right here

Where its reverberation will be clear.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 4, 2012

Deliverance Prayer

Deliverance Prayer (background music "The Blessing" by Isaac Shepard)

Bring my soul up out of Egypt

Walk me step by patient step

out of the patterns that enslave me

Release me from the lockstep

that doesn’t look

that is afraid to seek the kinship of a smile

Teach me to spin out on the leaf edge

of the wind

and twirl into the knowing

of the infinite variety —

Intricacies which Life has ever blessed

Let me no longer follow

the commands that run them over

that allow us three or four straight norms at best

Unclamp my feet from marching

Free my toes

to find the subtle footholds

midst the wildness of the river

Free the rivers, too

and let us all please tumble brightly

down the perfect, wild, unchanneled 

course that we were born for

Let us know each other 

deeply, truly, freely

Bring my soul up out of Egypt

That I may worship

My Good.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 3, 2012

photo by Edward Mulhern

Waltz Time

I was dancing with my darling

The night they were playing

That beautiful Tennessee Waltz

And you know how it goes

Well, we stepped on some toes

But we’re certain it wasn’t our faults.

For we swung round and round

Round and round, round and round

Till the ceiling spun into the walls

And though we heard people swear

As we crashed here and there

We hardly even noticed their falls.

I was dancing with my darling

The night they were playing

That beautiful Tennessee Waltz

Till they cleared off the floor

And showed us the door

And brought all our fun to a halt(z).

©Wendy Mulhern

Spring, 2009

Opinions

Having an opinion about everything

May be a sign of loneliness

Like playing cards with yourself

Everything finished, nothing waiting

For input from another hand.

Having an opinion about everything

Makes it harder

To find a match

Since meeting point for point

At every tooth of thought

Would be required to turn the key

To lift the latch.

Alas for you, then, who collect

Large bellies of opinion

That block your movement

And mistake correctness for dominion

Here is your hope:

Opinions can be left behind

You can abandon them for love

And thereby liberate your mind.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 1, 2012

Soporific Rain

Soporific rain

Robs the morning

Of its earliest pursuits

Yet the sweetness

of the night remains

Wraps itself around my dreaming music

Languidly we move

There is no way

The clock can catch us

in its marching regimen

We’ll slide in languid sloth into the day

Let later light, in its own time

attract us

The day has duties that we dare not shirk

But we can meet them softly, without stress

Yes, we’ll take on all our needed work

But through a film of rain-kissed happiness.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 1, 2012