Stuff I’m not talking about
piles up, squashing my nimbleness
of speech, of thought
Things I say over top of it
lack the connection to underlying structure,
can’t indicate the muscle, bone, and sinew
They slope off like fluff –
they don’t hold my interest,
I can’t write them down
And the stuff I’m not talking about
hulks in its darkness –
seems like I’ll need more than words
to pull it out.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 15, 2022
You talk about healing.
I want you to know
that I will not accept as healing
that which insists that I stuff my rage,
be polite about my pain,
and sets me on a postage stamp of
“seeing the good,”
a narrow strip of positive
To be whole, I need a truth so large
it swallows my complaint,
wraps up everything I am
in its embrace,
silences my howling
in the full-home chord
of welcome,
has space enough for all of me to soar.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 13, 2022
For however short a time,
one strain of internal chatter
has been hushed,
and in the stillness,
the music speaks to me
with more nuance than ever
as I let myself receive
the full gift of its offering
with no commentary as to how I,
if circumstances had allowed,
might have measured up.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 12, 2022
Work in the sun has dissipated
my ableness to put two words together,
but light drenched images remain,
and it was fine to watch the colors change –
waves of richness as the sun went down
so late in the evening – too late for me
for anything but watching
and drifting off, and tottering to bed.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2022
Teach me to be
the child I never was –
open-minded, free,
eager to receive
whatever gift is offered
in another’s face
Teach me to be the child I am,
whom I have been since before the world began,
eager to give what is given to me
of the light that delights
and enlightens us all.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 9, 2022
Sometimes I want to cry
for no reason,
sometimes music that sounds like coming home
will bring the tears –
I don’t know why, a kind of longing, maybe
Sometimes I want to slide back
into a beloved book, one I’ve read
more than once. Just let
all the important problems
I seek so earnestly to solve
wait until morning,
until a festival of dreams
has washed my mind clean
and I’m ready to start again.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 8, 2022
Things unravel
that were never fiber,
that turn out not to have
even the substance of thread
or the chain of a story
They dissolve like dreams in the morning,
and my footing, too, must realign itself
to day’s dimensions, to gravity’s
orientation
Every unraveling is a reveal –
that which is there after it’s gone
will teach us substance.
Our being there after it’s gone
shows us our place.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 6, 2022
I can remember lakes of kindness
and jumping into them,
and the light that powers smiles
soaking in, and filling up, flooding me
with an abiding wellbeing
Some I could return to often,
some were more like puddles
but were enough to light me up
There were dry patches, too.
I could go for long times in between ablutions,
sustaining as they were,
and because I still could access them in memory
But the richest thing is when
I can create a lake for others –
when I do that, I never lack.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 5, 2022
Hold me in the hollow
of the waxing crescent moon,
in the halo of the memory of day,
let me cruise as softly
toward the dark horizon’s hills,
soothed in my sweet hammock’s gentle sway
Stars have been infrequent
in this recent time of year –
rain has owned the music of the night,
but frogs will sing for rain or stars,
and I –
I’ll take in either with delight.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 3, 2022
We are not made of smoke,
and so the sweeping winds,
fast shifting and insistent,
don’t disperse us
And those who wield the fans that push opinions
can’t corral us into predesigned reactions,
however much they blow on us,
however much it seems as if they can
We’re made of truth.
So whatever winds blow through,
they can’t disturb us –
can’t rearrange our shape,
can’t realign us
And this is true of everyone,
and so we stand,
when all the smoke has cleared,
exactly where we are.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 2, 2022