Outside, in the bright sun and cold wind,
the maple limbs stretch red against the sky.
The aspens reach eager and graceful
in their sea green tint.
Small flocks of birds come through,
and I’m glad these trees
give them comfort on their journey,
and maybe encourage them
to stay awhile.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 29, 2023
We welcome what sweeps through us
and makes us new,
we welcome sun, we welcome rain,
we welcome stars that show up briefly
at five a.m., and clouds the hills snag,
while they’re blowing through
We call it life
for being so much more than we can fathom,
we call it love for how it makes us
glad we’re here.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 28, 2023
Something that does not exist
cannot be shattered
High horse of my positions,
brittle presuppositions,
self justified opinions
don’t need to fall in shards about my feet
Look at this tender dissolution,
silent, swift dispersal
of all of those illusions –
the sure fulfillment
of the law of presence
which holds me ever safe
here in my truth.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 26, 2023
In moments I fathom
having never touched down
into bone, into skull,
into what can be alone –
having never come to think
that I could be destroyed
or even lost – sitting present
in the sweet company
of consciousness itself,
which by its nature
is comprised of knowing,
and knows the feather movements
and the grand turnings –
rivers of awareness,
oceans of connection –
this being what is me,
this being what is us –
galaxies of bright communication,
universe of intermingled song.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 25, 2023
This will not be lost
(phrases snatched
like images from dreams,
nothing predetermined
nor tallied, after the fact)
This doesn’t need to be a riddle –
it can be the sweet way you find yourself
after a full day – weathered,
suffused with heat,
dry after the day’s cold wind,
feeling the strong contrast of the indoors,
thin but solid shell against the roving night
You find yourself within,
at peace, clean, ready for sleep,
willing to let fears and worries go,
learning to trust what holds you safe.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 23, 2023
I can be patient. I can reweave the web of
no way to be afraid
as often as I need to.
Reweaving does not connote failure –
it is appropriate to do it every day,
to take the bright new thoughts
and prove what they can add –
how they become the surface that I walk on,
the new fearlessness each moment offers,
rewoven into power for the day.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 22, 2023
We all are yearning towards ourselves,
our undiluted truth,
though we may settle, in the flash of time,
for something that reminds us of it
(a homonym, perhaps, or some non-fitting,
but still tempting, rhyme)
We put on what we do,
we try to realize ourselves.
When we fail, our truth,
though covered up, still gleams
(like coals in ash, which still have power
to ignite another fire)
None of what we posture
can make us any better,
none of how we fail
can make us any worse –
our truth – each one unique,
all of a kind,
will find us in the unity of Mind.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 21, 2023
The view parts like silk,
fraying into long ribbons,
the scene behind the screen
coming into view
It’s not, as we had thought, a large world,
ourselves as tiny crawlers on the surface,
maybe able to unleash a cataclysm
but certainly unable to avert one
Instead, these pictures
(the weather, the economy, the politics)
will burn away like film, like mesh,
to show the wider landscape of the mind,
where we have much more power than we thought,
but only in the service
of what we really are.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 18, 2023
At day’s end
my step is light,
my head is clear
(if rather empty)
I haven’t stowed
things I couldn’t say,
I haven’t worried,
I haven’t tried to solve
someone else’s problems,
or taken in ill-fitting attributions
I’ve been open to the knowing
which accompanies all being,
I have taken on good tasks
and brought them to completion,
there has been joy, there has been laughter,
there has been kindness –
I am content, for that has been enough.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 17, 2023
Morning rises
through layers of unveiling –
dark lifts, fog forms,
softening the moon
Fog melts, and dainty clouds appear
in slowly clarifying blue,
sun tops the evergreens, and slides
slowly southward,
tiny dewdrops sparkle
on tufts of tender turf
Auspicious opportunities
parade before the hours –
we will ride some of them,
others will wait
We are in this day, in which
presence is progress,
and process has nothing to do with it.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 16, 2023