Remedy

Beyond the whole charade of shame and fear

and the confusing counsel to atone,

the place of being where your name is clear

awaits the understanding that will bring you home

Above the clamor of the inner voices

that trace the stories, tally all the fault,

you’ve always sensed there might be other choices —

within the clutter, something to exalt

And so it’s only partially surprising

to find no need to settle all the scores,

not even need to stage a great uprising

to overthrow what held you down before.

Your remedy is simple but extreme —

you wake to find the whole thing was a dream.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 21, 2016

Music

Like silk in wind,

like seaweed in water

my inside and outside

move as one,

carried in a current

which knows no separation

between the two

Caught up in the music,

as instrument, as dancer,

as transported listener —

the lift is the same,

as is the filling

I can never be

outside its presence:

I swim and breathe in music,

and music swims and breathes in me.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 20, 2016

The Beat

Well, there are pockets of regret

in every cupboard, every drawer —

things that were neglected,

things that were forgotten,

things that could have been but never were

But there is a time for clearing,

and every un-cashed chance

can be redeemed.

Life, after all, doesn’t march

down a track of time,

leaving all that’s missed

hopelessly behind

The time of life

keeps on inviting us

to jump in, double dutch,

and if that seems too daunting,

it will give us another chance.

Life doesn’t let us forever miss the beat —

Life orchestrates us, and Life is complete.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 18, 2016

Kindness

Let the light of kindness

shine upon us all

now in the low time of the sun’s angle

when momentary gleams offer

bittersweet awareness —

a few bright leaves among the bare branches

lit up against the dark clouds

Let kindness be the warmth

upon the tangled coil

of hunching inward against the cold,

let it glow upon 
the laughter stretched too thin 
to counter tension

At the touch of kindness

we can uncurl,

stretch out the places that were cramped and pained,

open outward into the comfort

of seeing there’s a place for us again

And as we are kind,

we will feel the flow of golden,

spreading richly through our limbs,

suffusing skin,

promising sustenance 

lasting through winter’s chill

bringing us supple

into spring’s sweet rays.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 17, 2016

Enlightenment

Even the inscrutable

can seem familiar —-

I can get used to the sounds of words

and not notice

I don’t know what they mean

or that, knowing the words,

I still don’t know the sense

Maybe I’ve patched some meaning on it,

an image that comes with the words,

maybe I read them thinking

of a conversation, or my afternoon

I have gone years that way

and missed, each time, the key dimension

that opens out the hidden laws,

the promised order

And if I find them,

suddenly I fly

with lift I didn’t know was there,

enlightened eyes,

and every word brings clarity

and secrets fall away like dreams —

in awe I trace the outlines

of reality.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 15, 2016

The Blessing

You can’t walk away.

You can’t choose

not to be blessed

The blessing goes with you,

persistent as a taunt —

you may think you want to walk away

but you can’t

You can turn your back

on a thousand years,

on hundreds of your deaths,

you can focus in on countless framings

of the old story

You can wave your arms

and shut your eyes,

you can plug your ears and shout

(as you’ve been doing all this time)

But when you stop

you will feel the blessing

approaching as if from afar

like sunrise

where you realize

after a while

that the light’s been with you

all the time you were waiting for it

and you haven’t been shrouded

nor yet exempted:

the blessing has been here all along.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 14, 2016

A New Song

We need a new music

and a new story —

This is not reality TV

This is the heart-gulp step

into the silent vestibule,

this is the waiting

for the summons of a chord tuning

This is the voice that rises

as if unbidden

from the depths of our longing

to reverberate,

to weave harmony,

to amplify the signal

that belongs to us and everyone

To sing this song

that hasn’t been imposed on us,

that rises from our fundamental frequency

and raises us

in grateful unity

as our collective voice

bounds out in light years

among the stars.

©Wendy Mulhern

November 13, 2016