The World Today

Can’t get too excited

about the choice between

the fox and the raccoon

to guard the henhouse

And though we well may be distraught

before the litany of fallen freedoms,

truth be told,

we’ve been chained

for as long as we remember

The shackles of any lie

will hold us prisoner.

Most effective are the ones

we never see

The amazing thing

is what unclasps them all —

miraculous, it seems,

when we consider 

number and duration

But it’s not a secret,

it’s what we all have heard,

for surely it’s the truth

that makes us free.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 4, 2017

Greater Good

Tempted to throw myself

into the sea again,

feeling the waters

behind my eyes

wanting to join

the seething ebb and flow —

I remind them that this is not

inevitable,

they would only be lost,

as would I,

by taking such a dive

There is a place for me

here at the helm of thought,

making the subtle distinctions

of perception,

ready with the course corrections

that will keep my ship from foundering

and deliver my proof

of the power of the higher Mind

for the greater good.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 3, 2017

Note to Self

So listen. If you’re going to be

a smart fish, know that,

if you take the bait, you don’t get credit

for all the times you passed it by.

The fisherman only gets wilier,

the lie never gets more true,

and if you want to stay free,

well, it’s up to you.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 2, 2017

Note to my email subscribers: There was a typo in yesterday’s poem. I’ve fixed it on my blogs, but once the email goes out, I have no way to get to the email texts. To see the poems on the blogs, just click on the title at the top, or on the comment button at the bottom. Thanks!

Coinage

They found themselves a little reluctant

to part with their coinage,

dear bought as it was, fraught with

wrenching choices and sacrifice

and the tippy balance point

of fate and luck.  They’d be happy

to give up their losses,

but maybe not their wins,

so they held on, though the corrosion

hurt them

They needed to get a sense of

what they wouldn’t lose

and what they’d gain

by letting go of all that they were grasping,

to feel, instead, the dawn upon their foreheads,

the bright glow that smoothed their brows,

the kindling excitement of laying hold

on that darting liquid light

of true worth.

Then they would know,

then they could let go.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 1, 2017

Walking Free

There isn’t anything you need to do first.

You don’t have to pay a debt,

explain a misstep,

get somebody else to say they’re sorry

You don’t have to go down corridors

of what happened

or why you or someone else

made certain choices,

or what might have happened,

had you chosen different

And you don’t need to fix

a broken system, don’t need to

proclaim its flaws till someone maybe hears,

don’t need to suffer

to prove how wrong it is

The light of you doesn’t require

any of those fuels, nor can any of those things

obscure or snuff it.

You can walk free

in your divinity, your wholeness —

Look up, set your feet, and go.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 28, 2017

Starting Place

Let me go back even now

to that place I discovered

in early morning prayer,

the place that felt like sunrise

beneath a long low cloud bank,

the place where, if I start there,

my hope rises, light and buoyant,

my prospects for the day

stretch out infinite,

my faith is shown to be

not something I must conjure,

but rather my connection,

sure and strong, to all that floods

the early day with light

Let me remember —

when I start there, I don’t need

a regimen of reform:

when I start there,

I have arrived.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 26, 2017

A New Start

In that nightmare world

where we all are graded,

our actions weighed, our choices judged,

where all of us know painfully

we haven’t measured up

to something,

could have done better,

could do still, if only . . . 

In that nightmare world, we think

we might feel better

if we’ve done better

than someone —

we think there’s comfort

in knowing that, at least,

we're not the worst

But we are waking from that world

and look: no one has been any less

than perfect and essential,

no one has been any more than others,

and no one, even us,

has made a trail of sorry choices,

no one has earned misery or loathing

Whole cityscapes of regret

crumble away,

fall and dissolve,

leaving the shining truth

for us to live in.

©Wendy Mulhern

February 25, 2017