Morning and Evening

I. Morning

I follow the sounds of your movement —

the wheelbarrow’s melodic trundle,

the slow squeal of the front door;

I feel the track of early sun

through the boughs of Douglas Fir —

the cool, the warm, the cool,

the bright, the more subdued

II. Evening

Now the moon

grows brighter as it rises,

The kettle’s mounting pitch approaches boil,

Piano music warbles on the radio,

The old man sits there — possibly he hears.

And you and I have worked

and we are tired, but satisfied —

The day has held us through its arc

and brought us, whole, to eventide.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 13, 2014

Side by Side

We walk, we work

Side by side,

We sleep against each other,

We strive, each in our own domain,

for mastery

We tell our dreams

Stride by stride,

Give counsel to each other,

We circle in our separate thoughts

and then come back

What images, he asks,

will fill your poem today?

Will it be light through leaves,

bare feet on grass,

thick chocolate at the bottom

of a paper cup?

Could be, I smile, could be —

Throw them all in,

See what comes up.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 13, 2014

Refining

When you melt

you slip away

from all those stories —

gravity pulls your essence

in a steady stream

of who you are

You flow away

from what you’ve done,

from what you’ve thought you’ve been,

from all those definitions of yourself

imposed by others and by circumstance

Some of those foreign things

go up in ash, some may remain

but you are here now —

your own cohesion

is your new reality

And you will shine

in such a pure reflective gleam

as you’re refined,

as you come clean.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 12, 2014

The price

This garden tending

is not a facile thing —

The easy steps

are undermined

by tough complexities:

Slugs decapitate my seedlings,

Cats make them casualties

of their hygiene

I provided, each time,

what I knew seedlings needed —

moisture-holding mulch,

light, smooth soil —

each of which then also brought

these unintended consequences

But I will not give up.

It is required of me

that I learn more and more

until I know enough

to put things into balance,

Which I can only gain

with deep attention.

It is fair that I,

like every living thing

should pay this price for life.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 10, 2014

Processes

Well, all this postulation,

all these square-edged pages,

cluttered thought,

have held me, for a time,

in a constricting maze

And I have found my breathing shallow

in the halted place

of waiting

while trying to push time,

regretting,

not able to make amends,

feeling the black ink of belittling stories

run towards my eyes

But all these things must fade

against the call of life,

grow weak against the moist soil,

disintegrate,

be swept away

by the bright deep breathing

of the water cycle,

of earth and sky,

and the clear imprint

of the living day.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 9, 2014

again and again and again

I will dip me in to drink

from the unformed place

I will let myself melt

I will celebrate

approaching empty

in open-handed faith

that brings nothing to the moment

but the readiness

to see the springing up of life

to feel it shooting through me

in recognition

to be the wonder

I couldn’t have imagined

to be born

again and again and again

in the swirling elements

that ever know their own.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 8, 2014

Learning Myself

I will distill this moment,

put it by,

and others like it

till I understand

And I will move in joy like the wind,

Untrammeled by a predetermined form,

I will be in the place I need most,

the place I am most needed —

It will be

a susurrus of tender willow,

the balm of blossom scent, 

a ripple’s laugh,

It will be

the nexus of nourishment

and the incubation place for things to come

I will be that sudden curl

around the chakras

that clasps the anchor 

to what can’t be moved,

and so procures its counterweight,

unfettered freedom

In that day, though I won’t be defined

in any way I’ve ever known,

I’ll know myself most deeply

and be home.

©Wendy Mulhern

April 7, 2014