Healing the Past

I start my journey back

across the chasm,

all those times of disappointment,

all those hurts, all those dry years,

the places where I felt

I’d need explanations, apologies —

to tell someone the wrongs

that had been done me

I take these steps

and virgin forest

springs up around me,

familiar as something

that’s always been here,

rich with layers and layers

of interacting life.

Where is the desert,

where the wilderness?

How deep my blindness must have been

not to have seen this!

How full the healing truth must be

to bring me home!

©Wendy Mulhern

February 24, 2017

Praying for the Enemy

Anybody can be called back.

The unbreakable cord 

that holds us to ourselves,

to who we really are,

to what we really want,

never lets go

And in this fullness of time,

it begins to make itself known.

The tug may first be felt

in quiet moments, between

the posturing, between the self justification,

between the self delusion

Once it starts asserting itself

there is actually no force

that can stand up to it.

Not willful blindness, not ugliness

of spirit, not power-drunk reflexes

of greedy grabbing

I affirm this cord in each of us.

I affirm it growing strong

and pulling all of us back

to our core love, from which vantage point

there is no more ability

to harm another.

I pray for all of us,

including the ones who need it most.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 23, 2017

Pray for Standing Rock

If everyone learns how to pray,

just because there’s no other recourse,

just because the only way to rise up

is to sink down into the rooted core of truth

If everyone learns how to pray

just because all other power

has been stripped from us,

that may be the way that we prevail

Prayer will rise like tides, like floods

and change everything —

our sense of self, community, 

and landscape,

prayer will render other powers

irrelevant

as it sweeps through us. You’ll see.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 22, 2017

The Dance

Hand to hand

and gaze to gaze

we look to find our truest ways

We try on clothes,

we try on moves,

we try to find a self that grooves,

we want to lift and float and fly,

break through the stiff and staid and dry

We want the space to give consent,

we want to be uniquely met,

not image to image

but soul to soul —

so shall we see each other whole.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 21, 2017

Unfoldment

And in the steady walk of days

you might suddenly be able

to move more swiftly,

quickly slipping into

some embodiment of your self

you never had been sure

how you could get to

Life seems so routine, then suddenly.

Grasp this now, for who knows when?

If it’s not here yet, keep on walking.

Time doesn’t own you, so . . . 

The engine of your heart’s desire

is always humming in the background,

purrs or lurches you along whether or not

you’re holding it in mind.

Time doesn’t own you, but it watches —

Your unfoldment is a good show.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 20, 2017

Objection

Pardon me if I’m not fired up

by words of contempt,

however justified its dealers

may feel it is

Makes me want to walk barefoot

in water-sheened sand

and feel my footsteps melt,

and let the words that come to me

in my perplexed objection

be smoothed out as well

There’s no room for love in contempt

and there’s no room for contempt in love

and in the revolution

we’ll need traction,

not the gear grinding slippage

of mutual accusation

But there’s no traction either

for these words of mine —

makes me want to give them up,

and myself as well,

to the leadings of a higher Mind.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 19, 2017

Happy

Today I woke up happy —

maybe it was the fresh wind

through the night,

or the spring-heralding sound

of many birds,

maybe it was the dreams

that had me tossing

but in the end resolved to power, freedom

Maybe it was the prayer

that stayed with me, deeper than thought

but surfacing, in song and memory,

at my several wakings,

sweeping in the clarity

of how I am held

safe and beloved

in the arms of morning.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 18, 2017