You talk to the trees at night
and their silence – maybe it speaks to you –
maybe their response –
of presence without words –
is in the language you are searching for –
something that won’t get caught
in the filters of the mind,
that will go right through
to where you’ve been waiting
all this time –
waiting to hear the deep tall message
that recognizes your soul.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 6, 2021
The trees took my thoughts,
spun them up through the lights in their branches,
sent back an illustration
that clarified everything
In that way, it was a conversation –
what they told me, what I told them.
Between us, there was much uplift,
in gesture and perspective,
depth of dimension, colors, light,
exaltation in what, together,
we came to understand.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 29, 2020
I find myself holding
a hopeful, awkward affection
for people I have never met
whom I may meet someday
Imagination can’t provide me words,
but I imagine listening,
hoping I will catch the cues,
and hoping, too, for lenience –
forgiveness for the things I fail to see
We get a moment’s intersection
where it’s possible
that we could find
a treasured understanding.
This I hope for, but I note
that we could also miss
For my part, I will hold my doors open,
my thoughts focused towards you
and not towards me,
I’ll trust that I’ll be guided
to the right words and perceptions
to see you as you most hope to be seen.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 8, 2020
Sometimes it seems
a small misstep
can punch me right through the floor –
not into free fall
so much as into hobbled stuckness
One misspeaking
can rip the whole fabric
of our mutual understanding,
leave us hugging at our rags –
efforts to mend it just make deeper tears
There is no hope
but to step back
to where I’m formed anew,
and from there, let my eyes reframe
a truer view.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 3, 2020
We don’t need loud voices
to speak to each other,
we are so close –
close enough to whisper,
close enough to feel each other’s breath
So close, in fact,
maybe we don’t need to talk at all.
Instead, we listen together,
hearing, at the same time,
the same unfolding
of the Spirit essence
that lets us move as one.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 3, 2020
At some moment of your permission
I step inside your words,
inhabit the image
that you constructed,
a vessel in which I feel
the rush of life
that you put into it
In that moment
it becomes mine, too —
a gift you’ve given me:
Heart body.
The trunks of trees that spoke
in your father’s voice
There is so much offered here —
so much more than conversation —
a boost of brightness
that arcs beyond the words,
warming and strengthening our bond.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 30, 2020
If I could tell you
my deepest, newest thoughts,
they would have the same words
that I’ve been saying for years,
the same words others are saying,
no doubt, like me, noticing that
they essence they are trying to convey
does not come through
Words! — they are fickle vessels,
more like light projections
that you can walk in front of
and fill them with your shadow
while the image is reflected
off of you
But light — light can inhabit words,
if briefly, and it can keep them
in listening’s reflective silence.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 23, 2019
You: What are you thinking about?
Me: Same thing I always —
You: Oh, God …
Me: That’s exactly right
You: And me, I’m thinking about
what I always think about, too …
(a pause, we snuggle in)
…the house — how to build it,
what to do next
The wonder of it is
that we can come together,
or almost — good enough
to keep the project going
day after week after year.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 17, 2019
A lot can ride
on the twinkle of eyes —
the smoothness of days,
the feeling of having done well,
the ease of incitement to laughter
These things testify
to the presence of
that which engenders the twinkle —
the substance it’s made of,
how it appears
out of what you might think of as nowhere,
thus proving as everywhere
what you may never see
but still most certainly need.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 13, 2019
I consider that each of us
knows what to do,
needs but the silence
of not being told,
needs but the trust
that when given the agency
we will acquit ourselves well
I think of the impulse
of tit for tat,
how it seems so hard
to remember
that only in choosing
to not bat back
have we any real chance
for release
And so I invite us to pause,
just let go of the need to do anything,
and welcome the touch of the centering stillness
that brings us together again.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 11, 2019