You go each night to do your last task –
closing the well house, checking that
all is well
And the night almost always
entices you to stay longer,
to watch the stars come out,
and the nocturnal wildlife,
to listen to the crickets
and let the day’s stresses dissipate
in the evening coolness
Many comforters may meet you
along that walk –
may they reach you in the places
you need them most.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 4, 2020
It is a tender time,
and the need for sweetness
may be mistaken for a craving
but it is really kindness we desire,
and the opportunity
to hold someone till all their fears dissolve,
to hold the stillness that can’t be moved
because it is everywhere,
to say good night with the assurance
of sweet dreams, deep rest,
and the splendid wonder
of an untrammeled morning.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 1, 2020
You may remember
words about divine wrath –
you may have trembled,
and you may wonder
at the troubling signs
of these emergent times
Wrath”s image, and its roaring fury,
express the power
to take down everything,
to burn up everything
that it opposes – not surprising, then,
that earth should tremble
Fear not, dear earth.
There’s no wrath here. Wrath kindles
when it sees something that opposes it.
But nothing can oppose the All,
and nothing stands
outside the Allness
Fear not, dear souls.
Nothing that is real
can be consumed.
And you are real,
for you are here,
and since you’re here,
you are beloved.
And since you’re loved,
you will stand pure,
untouched by anything that seems to fall.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 27, 2020
Let me construct a thought blanket —
it’s light as lace, and made of stars,
it’s stretchy and it’s huggy
and infinitely soft
I will throw it over
my thought of you —
I hope you will feel it
snuggling in. I hope you will find
the stars nourishing,
and that the net of it
will pull things together for you
and make you feel at peace
I hope it will hold you
steady like the moon
through all the hours of night,
that it will help you sleep
and make your dreams be sweet and bright,
I hope it will cancel all your worries
and deliver you refreshed
into the morning light.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 6, 2020
I’ve decided I like being
someone who can’t be let down,
someone who’s always
able to offer
comfort to another
I prefer that to being
someone who has standards of behavior
with the duty to require them of others,
who needs to disapprove
when standards are not met,
who needs to coach when people get it wrong
That way, if you’re falling off the edge,
or if you think you’ve lost all your deserving,
I can let you feel
the comfort that’s unending,
you can know the depth
of that which treasures you
And that’s a comfort which,
when I can give it,
unfailingly will comfort me as well.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 14, 2019
Every little one
gets to be comforted,
however muddy
they may have become,
however muddled,
however wrong-headed
they may have been
in their self justified crusades —
every one of them
gets to come home
In this new regime
there is no contest,
in this understanding,
nothing less than the absolute worth
of each of them,
the hush inducing glory
of each tiny one, and each great one, too,
set holy in the rightness
of encircling Love.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 23, 2018
I heard without a doubt
(my Creator told me
clear as the blue shine on the floor
stretching to the boundaries
of all my being)
I heard without a doubt
that at the very bottom of my tears
there was nothing there but goodness
Why then, was I still afraid?
Did I still believe my life rolled out
in some realm other than
the one my Maker owned?
Did I think I might be comforted
but not healed? Saved but left alone?
Surely (my Creator told me
this morning as I watched the tiny
crescent moon start its traverse
across the brightening sky)
Surely you couldn’t think
I’d leave you in a realm I didn’t govern!
Surely you can feel: It’s not
that I deliver you from evil
so much as that my all-present goodness
always governs all events —
Yours, too. Yourself, your family
and every fact unfolding in this day.
And that’s why, in my goodness,
you don’t have to be afraid.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 16, 2017
Those moments
wanted to translate themselves
into dreams, wanted to be
buoyant floating in delicious water
and amazed soaring
through suddenly supportive air
They wanted to be
the supreme comfort of offering solace,
for indeed they were that —
they were the clarity seen through tears,
the contact point wherein
our eyes receive each other
The sense of being held
fully as long as is needed,
the fact that people can sometimes be symbols
for something much deeper,
much more desired,
than their circumscribed lives
can offer. They can represent
the truth — the one thing someone
just at that time
most needed to know.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 16, 2016
Catch me up in the echo of wind
blowing through the dark
with the comfort of miles traversed
up along the coast and through the city,
journeys of clouds and rain bringing promise
of the year’s steady, steadying turning
Let my wistfulness, that longed
to be wrapped and held,
be cradled in this,
the purpose that works its
equalizing movement
all through the night.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 1, 2015
I will hold you
until all your anxieties
and all your busy analyzers
turn around three times
and settle down
I will hold you
till the counsel of your inner stillness
finds its fire,
lights up its knowing
I will hold you
until all your little animals —
the ones that hover in the dark
just out of view —
come curious and hopeful
to the fire, and,
still alert but now calm,
lie down
You can hold me
till all my little animals
leave all their little dreads,
come in to settle by the fire.
Yes, you can hold me the same.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 24, 2014