I can’t plan for my mortality –
the very stuff of it
falls apart like silt –
nothing I can build with
has anything to do with it
I can’t plan either
for your mortality –
I have to live as if
we have eternity to learn
the perfect grace for which we daily strive –
it is the only way that I can pick up
these essential strands
of all we care about,
and weave them day by day.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 3, 2022
The paths they each were taking
couldn’t be seen on the surface,
couldn’t be seen by each other
or even by themselves
They swooped and soared like kites,
and you might think they were governed
by the wind. But all the while
they felt the tug beneath,
the anchored place that didn’t move much,
but was their guidance,
enabling their flight
whether they knew it or not.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 2, 2022
I remembered a thing about birds –
how they need gravity
in order to fly,
how they squirt themselves through the air
using their weight to lean into the wind cushion,
a thing they show us
about using the weight of our days
for taking off.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 1, 2022
Am I allowed to come back to
happiness as a normal state?
Am I allowed, despite naivete
I have been disabused of,
despite egregious flaws
of which I’ve now become aware,
to live a day in simple joy?
And maybe many of them,
day after day (like I’ve been doing)?
Can it be real that I have left the fear behind
(the fear of falling to my deserved demise)?
Here at my center,
a tender truth is telling me
stay here. Stay here always
to learn this yes.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 28, 2022
There’s a certain delight
in setting things down just so,
starting a conversation
in texture and color,
source and form
These silent things
speak of connections
I can almost make,
in a language
I can almost understand.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 28, 2022
Evening coolness begins to flow in
through the tops of trees,
deeply welcome
after the day’s heat
Everything has meaning –
blackbird song and colors through the windows,
the ponderous importance of everybody’s life.
Even moths and dandelion fluffs
have infinite weight
in the balance of eternity,
as do you, my friend,
as do you.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 27, 2022
Sometimes I feel myself swimming,
as structures dissolve around me –
all the things that people try to count on,
all the reasons people give for living
There still seems to be a grand march
of purpose – many marches –
stridently in conflict,
but my sense of what is real
sinks right through them –
I can’t align myself to their directions
Sometimes I feel new life forming –
seeds amidst the liquid,
reaching out to web together,
understanding substance in a way
we haven’t done before,
giving me a place to plant my hope.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 26, 2022
With my heart I follow
the blades of grass
down to their still points –
each one has a center,
each is individual,
so none become displaced,
though waves of wind sweep over,
bending them silver red green gold
in turn, though they bow in sequence,
then spring back –
each one has its anchor in the ground,
each its source of nutrient,
each its place in the land
to rise up into everything it is
and shimmer the collective dance.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 23, 2022
The small voice
didn’t say this to me, because
the still small voice
is only at the center –
speaks to the center, from the center,
of the center
Words that speak of the approach
are not of the center –
they can’t wield the necessary stillness,
can’t make clear
the one most needed thing
the still small voice can tell me:
the center is here.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 22, 2022
I have been severe with myself
(though maybe not as much as I deserve)
I have needed this reckoning
to see the many ways I’ve come up short
But then I keep on finding this release
that cancels out the penalty
with a surfeit of fine grained joys,
appreciation at the smallest scale,
a permeating of respect
that grants to everything
its time and place,
and in this governance
there is forgiveness
for me and everyone who’s lost the way.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 21, 2022