Tag Archives: communication

Gulch

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I can’t go to where you are.
There are no roads.
Though I had wanted to establish some
I didn’t know what kind of bridge
to build over the silence
that became a gulch
(The more I tried, the more
the crumbly land gave in)

And now, I have no toehold
on the other side
I can only be glad
that there are others with you
And that they can help
And I can only work
on the general greening
which has begun
and will continue
Until someday
Our whole shared landscape is restored
And I’ll cross over.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 22, 2013


Reconsidering

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Well, actually,
I don’t want to be the one
to do the talking
(Steam still rolling off of my indignant thoughts,
which mostly, to the mercy of the peace,
were never given breath)

I’m tired already, from their
pacing around inside the cage
of my surprise,
Rattling my words, finding them
deficient

It’s not enough that I deny them voice
They need to change, to find a higher mission
Somehow these thoughts
must all return to calm

So I consider:
Do I want to choose my friends, my loves,
on grounds of shared opinions,
so we can lie together
flat along the plane that we have chosen?

Or do I want to own
all the dimensions,
To spread out free, in an embrace
that hugs us all,
Transcending any scorn or condemnation?

Thank you. Right.
I won’t be duped to carrying that baggage on the plane
So I release all this from thought
to dwell in peace again.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 15, 2013


An Invitation

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Change my mind —
I invite you —
For though I may resist
at first,
I welcome
the free fall that comes
when my prior suppositions
are knocked away —
That airy, floating weightlessness
in which begins to coalesce
a new perspective,
And I start to grasp:
The world is bigger than I thought.
There is more room than there was before
within my mind’s horizons
For expression,
For free flying,
For opening outward and outward,
Unfolding in new bloom. 

©Wendy Mulhern
April 7, 2013


Finding a way

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Let’s find the ways
that we can fit together.
Let’s find how we are family
And how a little shifting of presuppositions
Will let our odd-shaped pieces
find a way to mesh.

It’s easy enough
to be all elbows
and bony knees,
But we have soft curves, too,
where we can empathize and understand
And this,
This warm, accommodating mass,
Is what we really, really want
More than being on top,
More than being right.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 4, 2013


Strategies

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I could go off into drift
I could let the sense of disconnect
condense,
fog up my sight with sadness,
close me in,
make me curl up into a small place
to collect the seeping darkness
in my body’s still,
to manufacture tears, perhaps
and soft howls.

I could wait there for you to notice.

It could be a long wait.

And it would start to seem pointless
after just a little while.
Plus if you did see me there,
what would you do?
I would be
one more unpleasant task,
another instance
of the universe’s obstinance
or bland indifference.

Better to laugh.
Better to consider
that none of this was made with me in mind
There certainly was no attempt
to cut me off
And maybe all of this was an illusion anyway —
Emotional hallucination
of an errant tooth.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 17, 2013


Barriers

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It’s easy for me to put up a barrier.
I can say
Here is a thing I need
And without it I can’t find
the full connection.
It can be a very reasonable thing,
A need that anyone would understand
But however compelling
my justification,
It’s still my choice.

I don’t have to let anything
be a barrier
between me and full connection
Not my inhibitions, or yours
Not your preoccupations, or mine
Not habit, not rhythm, not time
Not species, not genus, not gender
I can run into these barriers
but I don’t have to.
It’s my choice.
Let me remember.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 16, 2013


Open

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I held myself open

and the currents coursed in and in
on waves of sound;
I let myself be incomplete
so Spirit could decide,
could take me,
use me in fulfilling its own ends.

I held myself open
and the uncompleted loop invited flow,
caught me up
within a larger motion,
beyond my thought of where I was to go.

This kind of attention —
How to follow
the impulse of the slightest nuance,
to feel the current so created
as a palpable connection —
Engendered unexpected exaltation.

There’s time to be open
And afterwards, time to close
in the grateful rest that plays back
the full glorious song of it,
Remembering it, integrating it,
Becoming whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 20, 2013


How you are seen

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We don’t need all your actions to be perfect
There could be broken lines,
uncompleted sentences,
Places where intention drifted
into non-action

We don’t need to see the whole arc
Indeed, we all are artists
with our eyes,
And expertly connect
the most barely suggested edges
into one whole picture
in our minds

No need, indeed no use,
for you to backtrack,
to explain yourself,
to fix your story.
It probably
won’t change our picture, anyway.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 11, 2013


Touching

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Here is the spiral that goes down
All the way in
Curling with you
the way you want to curl
Infinitely deep
till it touches
that point of satisfaction
where you wanted
to be touched

Here is the holding with you
that doesn’t care
what you said
That lets the hurled words
fall off like froth
And moves along the deeper layers —
the need beneath the words,
beneath the thought

We have all the time in the world
All the time to be comprehended
Down to the core
All the time to let
exquisite balance
assert itself
In which we can unite
in silent gyroscopic spin.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 6, 2013


Swimming

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I don’t want to ever again
stumble
amid the rocky mazes
of social mores
Or ever bark my shins
against my own obtuseness,
My failures to anticipate
how something I might say or do
may have a bad effect
on someone else.

The tide has risen
and I now move
in a different, kinder medium
Where, in the main,
my weight is born
by that in which I swim
And the soft currents we create
uphold a natural coordination.

I will insist on moving in this ocean.
If, again, the tide goes out
and if I find myself
marooned amidst the ruins
of expectations,
I’ll stay still and watchful
Tenacious as a mussel
till the tide returns
and I can swim again.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 4, 2013