Every Flight

No flight is without grace.

Though raucous caws may mark

disputings, though there may be

ungainly pecking orders, ruffled feathers

Still each one finds the gentle cushion

in the rush of forces they are one with

as they rise and dip with expertise

and no negotiation,

casting themselves effortlessly

into the stream, borne up

just as they expect

The scheme of everything

holds each in place,

no flight, however brief,

is without grace.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 7, 2017

Otherworlding

Well, I suppose we all

live in different worlds

and intersect each other

tenuously, along the meanings

of words and gestures

and a set of frames

we each call every day

And only in haphazard ways

sustain the prevalent illusion

of having a shared world

and similar perceptions

And so it’s not so strange, perhaps

to see the old man otherworlding,

slouching and nodding, sleeping in his chair,

and waking, seeming that he doesn’t see us,

or making statements

from some other when and where

I guess we choose our levels

of intersection, how much we work

on depth in our connections,

how much we try to reconcile

what others see with that which we perceive

Perhaps he’s tired of working at it

(and also never really tried)

and now he simply drifts,

or else he chose to leave.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 6, 2017

Little Steps

Let’s ride with glee

on our small spurts of progress,

like the first time, on a unicycle,

I rode three feet unaided —

Yes! This is a milestone —

it’s worth the exhilaration

even if I’m not ready yet

to join the circus

Success builds on success

like seedling leaves that sprout

from cotyledons and grow bigger,

each of them with a potential

new leaf behind its ear

We can celebrate

today’s small gains —

they will propel us 

through the year.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 5, 2017

Hibernating

Though it is past solstice,

darkness still comes on sudden –

though the day has been bright

and there’s still pale orange

around the horizon,

the trees have gone all silhouette,

bringing their near blackness

into the equation,

and the half moon, now in mid sky,

is already bright.

Early to bed and late to rise

seems a good motto

in this very cold time of year.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 4, 2017

Children of the One

There is no secret

that can be hidden

from honest hearts,

for they are bound together

in the pulse of everything

The rhythm teaches them,

the beat sustains them,

the sequence of the wave,

in how it moves and flows

to each one in its perfect time

assures there is no lost knowing,

for they are all connected

There is no shadow government

that can control the working

of inner truth —

It feeds us from within

with what we are, with 

what can never be subjugated,

because there is no place to stand

outside the All.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 3, 2017

Slow Learners

Oh, we are learning this slowly!

But maybe that’s OK. Maybe we have

plenty of time, as long as it takes

Maybe the speed of time

is a function of 

the pace of our learning.

Maybe time and learning

are both the same,

both nothing

in the scheme of eternity

Maybe we’re just finding

what we’ve always known,

and we will remember

how to take in 

all dimensions at once,

so we can see them dance around each other,

so we can dance with them.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 2, 2017

First Day of the Year

And if we sit around

reading books all day,

one day a year,

what does it matter?

And if we lost our equilibrium

for one long moment,

if we yelled and screamed

and said unrepeatable things

to someone who won’t remember,

does it matter?

We woke up this morning feeling good,

feeling close, well rested, well connected.

Later, we felt the weight

of our responsibility to save the world

through the concentration of our best thoughts,

but that passed quickly,

overtaken by a story in a book

and the putting aside

of most everything present

I may pick it up again

with the grave attention it deserves:

tomorrow gives us another chance.

©Wendy Mulhern

January 1, 2017