Tag Archives: body

Embodiment

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me at Katama

In small steps
my body starts to learn
The only thing that holds it back
is fear

Though fear would say
it holds the path of safety
on which, if I walked far enough,
I would arrive,
In fact, that path will never
get me anywhere but dead
and leaving it
I find myself alive

My only body
is me, embodied,
the bold and present evidence
of Spirit’s being —
It is not shackled,
It does not yearn towards death
but bounds forth fresh,
deep joy receiving.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 23, 2014

photo by Heather Mulhern

Contact

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contact

Hold me and swing
Let us engage
the elemental forces,
Let us harness
the power of gravity
to catapult ourselves
(slingshot around a planet
and on till morning)

Lean in to me
Let us notice
the power of support
to make us feel strong and included,
to make us feel valued and needed

It’s no great virtue
to walk alone —
It doesn’t tap the half of us,
our grand capacity
to wield the magic of connection,
to launch each other upwards into flight.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 22, 2014

Bone of my bones

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The only thing
that can flow inside me
is love.
The only thing that quickens me
Oxygenates the deepest reaches
of my system
Wakes me up
and lets me move
is love.
The only substance of my bones,
their solid comfort, steady, strong support,
their unassuming service, their
good-natured density,
is love.

And love ignites the gratitude
that courses through me, leaps
along my limbs,
Curls into my inner places 
with their secret glow,
Lights me like a lantern, pours
illumination out
through my eyes, my skin, my tongue.
And love will ever lead me to my own,
The place that I may bless,
My heart, my home.
And love will guide my words, my steps, my days
In every breath of mine evincing praise.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2013


My bones

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The silent structure of support
makes no bones about its role
Doesn’t speak
Doesn’t have opinions
but stands a steady presence
making room
for currents to course through
Holding up the arcs of strength
Allowing movement

And to feel it in my bones
means to be sure
Not based on whim or mood
or pretense or projection
But on the solid weight of being —
That in me which interacts with gravity —
Its density providing quiet dignity
Competent in service
Standing up
for me.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 21, 2012


True Reflection

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These are not the signals
This is not the track on which you are fulfilled
Turn away from that mirror
Ask for the inner call
Seek your true reflection
in an ancient tree
or anything you can still find
of earth’s wildness
Pull up, from depths
the memories of times when you were sparked
When that deep surge of your aliveness
rumbled up like magma from your core

Feel the rivers of your inner landscape
rise to meet what you recall
Feel them roaring, thrumming, thundering
beneath your skin
In the glow that they engender
you will see yourself reflected
in the light you see responding
from other eyes
This is the true signal
This is how you know 
what you are,
This is your shape, your shine, your size.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 23, 2012


Song of the Eternal Body

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Each of us is anciently wise
Each holds the source
of the essential sequences of being
Each integrally joined
to that one primal course
The pulse of life, its elemental meaning

Funny how the secret waits so silently —
day by day does nothing to assert itself —
And yet, as oracle, will tell us when we ask
the things we thought were far beyond our grasp

Ripples of mirth, spreading of connection
Bands of support, in joyful integration
The poise of totally assured perfection
is celebrated here in exaltation

And it sings:
We are right here
Where music flows within 
like breath, like blood
And light shoots through
like waves of impulse spreading
We are right here
We hold you timeless in the web of life
and everything comprising us is good.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 23, 2012





Touch Hunger

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Now that I know about my own touch hunger
I see touch hunger everywhere I look
Faces longing to be stroked
Bodies leaning out toward one another
The boy whose agitated energy
moved him in an oscillating “8”
Just like my daughter moved
when she was small and needed to be held

We live in an emaciated state
Not knowing what we crave, how to relate
Our bodies stick-like, prickly, stiff
from starving for our basic daily touch

Caged off by fears, by norms, by talk of sin
We need to open gates, and so begin
to feed each other’s hunger
so we can
fill up our souls, and so be whole again.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 16, 2012



This body made of thought

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In this body made of thought
Made of moving, intersecting vertices
Made of whorls of cross connecting vortexes
There is a place unutterably still

A furry animal may curl and rest
So soft, so trusting, so at home
While outside, body moves
As mistress of the winds
Interchanging energetic waves

This body made of thought is hard to size
It sinks into the earth, it kisses skies
It moves with and creates the winds that rise
It’s everything reflected in its eyes

While on the inside, concentrated quiet
A weightless place, where every forming impulse
floats
before its launch in integrated motion
and after it’s received back to its home

It is a new anatomy
What book has shown us this?
And yet we saw it
And we felt it
And we named it what it is
And now that we have named it
We’ll see it more and more
Dynamic body made of thought
And its deep, quiet, potent core.

 © Wendy Mulhern
March 4, 2012