I settle into my sleepiness
like it’s a soft chair
that sends rest up through me,
growing like fast vines
to form a cradling network
There is so much more to do,
but I’ve fallen, gratefully,
into the willingness to let it go another day,
to let the wave of eagerness
catch up to me again
so I can ride it
through the next phase of my work.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 25, 2022
The eye can gaze on beauty,
on the dance and glance of color –
how one settles into another,
how the conversation of contrast
and family membership
can keep one entranced
Well, me in particular –
I keep delighting in the colors,
how enchantingly they blend
and set each other off,
and catch reflections of each other
in their sheen. They sing to me
as if I had chosen them,
as if I had planned this all out.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 24, 2022
I summon words to talk about
the place where words have crashed,
where I abandoned them
(a wing wrenched off, the fuselage burnt out)
and the entire arena (every place constructed
for the words to play)
now proven contrary to natural law
I summon words to hunt for hope,
and notice hope, in fact, springs eager
from the massive failure of what crashed
Everyone is so thirsty
for the sight of that small green shoot
and the taste of the water offered
in the place without words, without judgment,
where everything starts over with the truth.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 22, 2022
When you find yourself alive
you still have to walk out
Once you’ve seen the overwhelming light
(not blinding, since it comes up
all around you, since it glows
through you and everything you see)
Once you’ve seen the light,
you still have to walk out
You have to go step by step
over the terrain of everything you’ve thought,
everything you’ve walked on
while not noticing its structure
You have to walk out learning
that every dogged step
can be reframed,
must be reformed,
must be transmuted by the light you glimpsed
first once, but then again
in every step that pulls light from the ground,
that grounds you in the solidness of being,
that makes real for you
the holy ground that bears you up
The light is there for you,
and still the journey’s yours –
you are alive and so
you have to walk out.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 20, 2022
Think of me as a pond.
A day leaps up like a fish
and flops back down. Emotions
ripple out to the edge
and settle smooth .
Within each day, moments of ruffle,
moments of calm. Space to be plumbed,
space to be inscrutable. Plenty of time
for reflection, plenty of depth
borrowed from the sky.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 19, 2022
Jewelry, small containers,
knick-knackeroo –
we’re getting down to the small stuff
and we’re so far from through
I wonder, will we ever
open this box again?
Will we ever want to use these things,
and if so, when?
These tracks, the leavings
of the course of our lives –
perhaps that’s all they are
and we could leave them behind
like footsteps in the sand
to simply disappear –
Why should it matter what becomes of them,
why give them all this care?
And yet I keep on packing up the boxes
And I think: if I don’t free myself
then something else will –
this is something that I know for sure is true,
but this picture of my daughter in the frame she made –
that’s coming with us,
and this other stuff will, too.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 18, 2022
It’s no surprise to me actually
that my life look like this
from the outside,
such that a card could call it.
It has been my inside secret,
it has been my cross,
it has been the nature of my search
these past years,
my solitary travel
And why should I not expect
it to continue
till I reach its end,
till I learn what meets it,
what heals its wounds?
©Wendy Mulhern
January 16, 2022
When I woke from my nap,
words kept darting around
like rapid eye movement,
stitching images together –
sense from nonsense, or vice versa
I had closed my eyes for just five minutes
but suddenly it was ten thirty
and I had no reason
to be up anymore
except to catch some fleeting words
and put them on a page.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 15, 2022
We walk around the neighborhood,
looping back around the streets like scribbles,
talking out the tangles, winding free
another layer
There is much to do, many miles
to unwalk, reclaim, release –
we will take it in stages,
come out again for another loop,
trace the path till everything comes clear.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 14, 2022
Truth is, I already miss the soil
and the sound of frogs
and walking on the land,
but as we walked the night suburban streets,
quiet, between the glowing houses,
the hwyl we’re learning still came through our feet,
still showed the way to walk in native power
We still walk in time
but maybe less so
as we are borne, as we become
the flowing stream,
the stories leave much less of an impression
while we’re living at the center of our being
Truth is, just like the river,
we’re flowing ever on towards home,
and everything we’re given
will find a way to come along.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 13, 2022