Look how everything has fallen in,
like sand into water,
look how every way we rated things
is gone –
the structures, the tallies,
elaborate rubrics,
purveyors of influence
all rendered silent
Here we are melted
in the variegated sheen
where each gleam
bears clear witness ,
infinity’s equalization
showing the depth we possess,
all of us needed,
none of us less.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 24, 2021
The demons are put to silence.
They are not permitted to use your voice
to rage. You have control
of your voice, and your thoughts.
And if this is not clear, the demons
may be permitted to rush down violently
and choke themselves. Whereby you can notice
that you are still here,
quiet, untouched.
You can receive
all the goodness offered you.
Hold out your hands, open your mouth
and take it in.
You never ran with them actually.
You have always stood here
like a mountainside,
you have always been this waterfall.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 22, 2021
This is something else – a river of regret,
something we all swim in, however we held ourselves,
whether superior, privileged, clean,
or rebellious, devious, naughty,
justified, victimized,
thoughtless, or cruel,
or having missed out on the party
The river carries us all –
I may notice
who comes up next to me –
how we might never have
been within arm’s length
in our former life
But the tears we flow in
are just the same, and the cleansing
does its work on all of us,
and it takes us to somewhere
much farther down the bank,
somewhere we can’t yet imagine.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 20, 2021
I’m thinking about
all the sorrows of the world –
the big and little heartbreaks,
chasms of loss, and trauma
walled up and sealed away, hidden
deep within the mazes of forgetting,
leaking out at unexpected times,
fluids of shame, embarrassment,
spumes of rage and helplessness
I’m thinking about
all the sorrows of the world,
all the tears that strive to cleanse,
all the keening, calling for connection …
and thinking what it could mean
if everything can be turned,
like a page, like a dream,
if everyone could be released,
allowed to flow home
to their native wholeness,
more than forgiven – rendered innocent –
ultimately untouched by any story,
fully seen, delighted to be known.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 19, 2021
I will know myself
down to the strong curl within,
I will not turn my head,
I will not make excuses
I will take ownership
of everything I am,
leave nothing to the whim of chance
or to the will of other forces.
I will be honest
ever as deeply as I know,
for only then
can I steer my course aright.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 17, 2021
Who am I to say I know
all the forms of love, or even think
that I would recognize them? Much less,
to place myself as expert, curator
Oh no, I’m here to see,
and gather what I can,
and hold the hope of tasting
something old or new of love
everywhere I turn
I will not try to catalog the infinite.
Instead, I will be glad to have been given
the faculty to see love in the ways I can,
which makes this puzzled earth
a present heaven.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 16, 2021
We live in this great adventure
(for certainly our life is more
than plodding doggedly toward death)
Life must ever be adventure
(or why would we persist with it
day after challenge riddled day?)
We live in Life’s adventure
(or we could say that Life’s adventure
is what we are)
Adventure we see unfolding
just like life unfolds,
branching and fusing
and moving all kinds of mountains,
as we live out what we are
and find out
what we will be.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 15, 2021
There is a language that we all speak –
it glows between whatever words we use,
it finds a way to dart out
like a child’s skip,
like a smile that sparks between two beings,
a shaft of trust that plumbs the deepest histories
When we listen in that language,
any words will work
and few of them are needed –
life blooms up from stone,
things that were lost
become the trail that leads us home.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 14, 2021
All of us belong
to desire, whatever impulse
seems to spark our movement,
whatever construct
we may feel defines us
All of us have
the same Spirit lifting us
into our words and our yearning,
guiding us into our doing
And if we ever think we’re stuck
in some replay of actions and reactions,
lodged within unfruitful ways of thinking,
the same desire
will use the force of factual presence,
simple and unstoppable,
to break through those illusions
and set us free.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 13, 2021
I said, we’re where we can imagine
living a normal life …
But what is normal, anyway,
and who decides that,
and who measures it?
Who advertises it,
who uses it to sell stuff,
and how does it relate
to what we’re building here?
The whole point being
to be forging
a different way of looking
at everything –
purpose, comfort, how we do things –
the whole point being
the incremental learning
of how to live an honest life.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 12, 2021