Tag Archives: awakening

Coming back

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I start to come up
from where I had fallen,
start to come back
from where I was knocked off center

The first thing is noticing
the sense of separation, and the second
is waiting, like someone just awakened,
for my orientation to return  –
no words in this part,
just an assertion of shape-memory,
gradual and incremental

After that, I am able
to talk about it. And my talking
makes a different kind of sense,
it smooths and soothes
my ruffled consciousness,
it pulls me back to where I know
what and how I orbit,  how I move,
and where my stillness rests.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 11, 2023

Illumination

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In small moments, we come around
to knowing who we are –
each time removing us
from grid-based definitions,
from categories and from grades

We know ourselves more fully
in the moments to which words
can only come after,
silent in prediction or prescription
but eloquent in poetic wonder,
tracing the illumination of contact,
chronicalling the joinery of Soul.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 10, 2022

State of the World

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The dream state of the world
convulses, rolls in chains,
roars in pain at their constraining,
rumbles and crashes, trying to rise

Its ripples murmur
through every earthbound life,
and each one feels it –
a nagging from afar,
a rage within

The beast in each
has been, thus far, contained
by shunting off to frame another’s blame,
where, in our ignorance,
or by some monstrous plan,
it will explode to burn
in someone else’s land

So it will be, until we learn the name
of that which sparks us all, so we can claim
the gentle power
that gives us each release,
resets the primal hour
and soothes the beast.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 8,  2021

A Story

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They didn’t think they wanted to get up,
absorbed, as they were, in arranging
the little curlicues of what they called their lives

Which always seemed to promise:
Sometime, somehow, they’d get it right
and win the prize of fortune, fame, delight

They thought it was annoying to be prodded,
even unfair, as it perhaps distracted
them off their game, made them miss their win,
plus it was fearsome to be demanded
to be more than they had ever been

And yet, when they finally awoke.
They had no more words to describe.
The things that looked like onerous demands
were simply invitations to arise,
to inhabit the vast regions of their being,
to humbly wield their quintessential power.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 28, 2020

A Grand Dawn

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I was jumping up and down
trying to tell everyone,
Look what I’ve learned!
Look at the truth that changes everything!
I was thinking the most important thing
in my whole life
was finding a way to let people know

And then I realized
the same discovery must dawn
in everyone. In each of them
it must be as precious, as profound,
as earth moving, as it is for me.
No one needs a second hand dawn –
Each one gets their own

And how rich it is to see
this treasure, latent or in full bloom,
hidden or celebrated,
in every person. On the street,
in the grocery store, at their work,
each one promised and given
the holy vision
that means so much,
that means everything.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 6, 2020

Waking Up

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I come out of the dream
of a small, dark, cluttered place,
and it takes me a while,
it takes me a while
to find my way back to myself

Oh, for sure, I was there all along,
the fabric of cause and effect I call me
never absent from thought –

Still, it takes a tuning –
tuning fork sound clear as water drops –
it takes being still, first,
then walking myself back,
back to my cause

So the sleepy gauze haze
can retreat from my eyes
and the clarion presence
that gives them shine
can reverberate through me anew.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 24, 2020

Dawn Chorus

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twin ponds through grass

Maybe there’s no need
to talk much
about the new awakening
Maybe it’s plenty good
to just listen
to the yawning and stretching
and the stunned silences
and the quiet gasps
and involuntary cries
Maybe we don’t need
to tell each other to awake,
for perhaps we all
are the dawn chorus.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 1, 2015

photo by Edward Mulhern