All of this is given –
the subtle colors of the grass in mist,
the times of work, and this,
a drift through almost sleep,
where I still hear the music,
but my sense of where I am slips
in place, in time, in physics –
my planes of presence bend, blend through each other
When I come back, the light is different,
and I feel rested, but still languid,
and richer for these fusings of perception,
the layers they have added to my day.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 17, 2023
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
What my phone’s camera does with the sky
may be nice,
but it doesn’t capture
that subtle conversation
between the soft blue-gray clouds
and the distant green-gray firs,
and the tinge of pink
where the sky touches down
And it can’t capture
how still it is, all of a sudden,
as the distant crows pause their racket
and there’s no car trekking down
the long surrounding road
Still enough to invite thunder
and maybe even rain,
unlikely but welcome
to sketch its verticality
all down the scene.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 30, 2021
I sample tips of douglass fir,
taste the subtle variation –
sweeter, sharper, more of lemon
or of resin – I taste, I taste,
but do not choose
It is like colors – I taste,
in my mind, a bright dark crimson,
then imagine taking it a shade towards peach,
I see the sheen the two set up,
interleaved, like early spring’s red maples,
I draw a line of deep slate indigo
to set the red off boldly, to vibrate
along the border
But, also, I can love the summer
of crimson into amber,
the warm delicious tones stirred up
through the transition
And green – I can’t even begin
to speak of green’s delights –
the luminescence of back-lit leaves,
the soothing shading of the summer firs
I’ll taste, I’ll taste,
but no, I will not choose –
each color needs all of the others,
and I need color in my sight and mind
to paint the glory of each light-blessed day.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 17, 2021
A slight shift in perspective
and suddenly, the interplay of things
is overtaken
by the interplay of color –
layers of light across the ground
picked up again in the layered colors
of last year’s blackberry vines,
the mauve and maroon
peaking through each other
Everywhere I look, echoes of the palette –
the gold sliding into the green and red,
the blue skimming across the gray –
I marvel at how deeply I am fed
by how colors
move through the day.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 17, 2021
Take a periwinkle crayon,
follow it down the whorl of memory
to the shiver of feeling it evoked –
not the easy love of magenta and blue-green,
but a tremulous liking,
flavor and texture
with a sliver of tears, perhaps,
a taste to grow into
Remember magenta berries,
the juicy ones with the pithy crunch
and the flavor unlike most anything –
a little sweet, a little floral,
which we ate, not knowing their name
or if they were edible,
along the high hedged path to Whitney’s house
Consider sisterhood –
its bittersweet, its viney tendrils,
multicolored and intimate,
a tie to grow into.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 4, 2020
Subtly, the palette changes —
bracken ferns to brown,
grasses back to green,
gold and orange along the river,
water vapor’s silver sheen
We raced the rain
all day yesterday
while the sun slowly made room
for more and more clouds
and the cat hunted happy in the field
and the needed tasks got done
And this morning,
rain holding off for just a while,
you added final touches
so now we can look up
and see the colors
and watch the rain.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 16, 2019
Dip your toe in color,
let the sensation spread
through your feet and up —
nothing stops the flood of light
No suction is required, no raking,
rubbing or coercing the color in —
it reaches your head and fingertips
in an instant,
you can feel its hum,
you can taste the pinks and purples
on your tongue
You can’t just walk away,
picture snapped —
you have been changed.
You’ll feel it in your steps
throughout the day.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 5, 2019
In a moment things can change color,
the fall of light, the path of clouds,
reflection’s edges …
My thought trails behind perceptions —
I reach for color names
but cannot find them
Or I still think the walls are yellow
long past the time that shadow
has rendered them something else —
Is it a weakness of language,
or of my nimbleness of mind,
or some efficient function
of what I need to know?
— As evening pulls the corners into umber,
leaving golden glows around the lamps.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 20, 2019
The day went soft.
Snow started but did not continue.
Ice on the pond got wet on top
and slushy at the edges.
Our feet stepped quiet
on the brown oak leaves
We, too, are soft —
soft towards each other,
soft in the tender places
where our edges touch
We may be overcast
but we are warm,
we may lack brilliant blue
but we still have sienna.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 18, 2019