Tag Archives: community

Ashes, Ashes

Posted on by
Reply

(regarding today’s shootings in Seattle)

Reason unravels
Reasons unravel
Following the rules —
staying within the lines —
is shown to hold no more safety
Anyone can fall . . . 

When the perimeter permitted is too small
to let us range
And it grows tighter
narrowing our path until we pace in figure eights
And we are running them like caged cats
in frenzy, beating out our necessary rhythm
in a permission-starved place 
where there’s no room for us
There will be breakages
and the rules won’t keep us safe.
Ashes! Ashes!

So it will continue
till one by one
we withdraw consent
to any rules that hem in our compassion
and rationalization that results in isolation
and any, all partitions based on fear
We can’t be safe until we come together
in the place that holds us all,
that holds us tender
Refusing scorn, refusing condemnation.

(The only way to bring someone to justice
is to be just
to banish from within the urge to hate
No lashing out in anger can release us
But grief’s collective wail
experienced in union
may let us see each other,
bring us home.)

©Wendy Mulhern
May 30, 2012





Processing

Posted on by
2

How will you remember these —
Swing of hammock, song of trees
Blanket filling in where sun has ceased?
Wounded thoughts that need to be released . . .

Every day I send these bobbing forth
Always with earnest hope that some will see
Encapsulated, bottled, swiftly corked
Love notes to my community

There is no string to bring me with them
I can’t expect them to be met, I know
They must be free if I’m to truly give them
I send them out, and I stay here, alone

The sun is sitting in the tops of trees
The wind, affectionate, still musses up their leaves
The afternoon slides on towards evening hours
Punctuated by suburban crows and cars

Evening evens everything
Draws together trees and sky
As here and there become the same,
Things that were distant softly unify

How will you remember this?
You’ll wrap it in the evening scents and sounds
You’ll bring your peace to reign, and here is how:
You’ll set your steady anchor in the now.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 13, 2012



Remembering

Posted on by
Reply



















We walk almost in trance
Remembering
Doing things no one has taught us
Doing them because we must —
Some ancient edict
has brought us to this point
Insistent hunger drives us to the place
where we may find ourselves together
learning grace

Slowly, we pick up and wear the wisdom
Older than the schools
and the long, loud rush of words
and the frantic reasoning
intoned over and over
The words of those who would impose
a logic to their will
and make us think we need to do
the things that scatter, kill
us off, to cull the ones
who for a time can do the bidding 
of a voice that doesn’t care.

But we return
Some of us, at first
Then a few more
We come in ones and twos
But we are many
And listening within
Each of us knows 
this thing we need to do

So we unite
First join hands
Then learn to breathe together
Then learn to hold the space for one another,
To shine the light that magnifies each person’s gift
That brings us into peace and closes up the rift
Till we can weave our separate music into one voice
To reconstruct our primal song, and so rejoice.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 9, 2012


Picture: Jennifer McCurdy Vortex Vessel, Photo by Gary Mirando



Soul holding

Posted on by
1

















And when he leaves his home each day

Embarks upon his sea of consciousness
Alone along the arc he travels
through crowds and conversations, correspondences
Who holds him, stands beside him, with him, guards him?

And when she hugs her cat
and leaves for work
in shoes she chose to play the part
along the corridor down which she walks
so far from any touch or recognition
Who holds her? In whose heart resides her image?
Who keeps a constant cord of close connection
belays her, holds the strong affection
to draw her home, remind her who she is?

How is it that we spend
the vast part of our day alone
tossed in the waves of our perceptions?
So dear it is to hold in thought the anchor
of someone who is holding us within

Then, friends, let us each lift up a soul
For something so intense
it is astonishing
how light they are
And that’s because they’re held already
Glistening as strings on Spirit’s harp
Suspended intricate and steady
Still grateful for our touch
that wakes them up.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 18, 2012

Picture: Jennifer McCurdy, Gilded Wind Nest. Photo by Gary Mirando.  Background music: Max Richter “Andras”

Touch Hunger

Posted on by
Reply

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



Plea for a new economy

Posted on by
Reply

All the well-paved roads
just lead to wasteland —
The greatest mecca now the shopping mall
where everything is so meticulously placed
and if they could
they would commodify the soul
Refract it into little mirrored packages
so it can make the stuff they sell attractive
tell us if we want some soul
we have to buy it
and to buy it, first we have to sell it
Many are the nets of thought to have us so believe
So deceived, we’re bought and sold
and so enslaved

But let us move into the clarity of day
And see that in reality
there is no “they”
And if we see the roads are broad and yet
their promises are hollow
and just because they have bright signs
we’re not compelled to follow
We may envision some more perfect way

A modest road, that winds beside a river
where folks on bicycles and feet could wander
A common square where people daily gather
for music, song and dance, discussion, laughter
Where there’s no price or prison for the soul
And in our giving and receiving 
we are whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 14, 2012


Tea in Wales

Posted on by
Reply

Because of gratitude—
Its calmness and the way it spread
soft smoothing over edges of my day
I’ve just remembered tea in Wales

In autumn marked by bright and dark
of thundershowers and rainbows
Expansive hills and warm close rooms
to shelter us from cold

And tea with milk that must be cream
because its butter kissed my lips
while its soft steam
enhanced the coziness
of that sweet scene

So now
Like shared discovery of magic places
A buttery warmth spreads over me
and leaves its traces
Here where I need this peace
and these bright graces
to meet the challenges
the day occasions
How bountiful this gratitude
That now avails me
of the memory
of tea in Wales.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 8, 2012



The need to be witnessed

Posted on by
Reply

It is not too much to ask
to have someone to take
by the hand
To lead down corridors
of memory, experience, imagination
To say to: look—here’s a picture of me
as a child
And here’s the song that still reminds me
of that summer back in ’78
full of sun and angst and wild escape
And here’s a thing I learned in Italy
along the streets of Florence

It’s not too much to ask
to have someone who keeps
a special box for treasures
tucked in an honored place
inside their mind
to put the things you share
and take them out
and look at them sometimes

And yes, you’ll keep a treasured box
for all the things your friend has shared
You’ll take them out in gratitude
You’ll love them, since you care

No need to strive for some
prescribed degree of fitness
It’s not too much to ask 
to have a witness.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 18, 2012



Convergence

Posted on by
Reply

As words come to me,
my receptivity
rises up to meet them

As my seeking for a way to bless
ranges out across my consciousness
Your arms extend a place for it to rest

Such bliss! To meet in the convergence
My need to give, your willingness
now, to receive
In this, your hunger blesses me
and meets my need

The figure loops, we spin around again
This time you give, and I receive
But then
Perhaps as current flows
dynamic, into one
Our pulse, too, unifies
and every boundary
becomes undone.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 17, 2012



Deliverance Prayer

Posted on by
Reply

 

Deliverance Prayer (background music “The Blessing” by Isaac Shepard)

Bring my soul up out of Egypt
Walk me step by patient step
out of the patterns that enslave me
Release me from the lockstep
that doesn’t look
that is afraid to seek the kinship of a smile
 
Teach me to spin out on the leaf edge
of the wind
and twirl into the knowing
of the infinite variety —
Intricacies which Life has ever blessed
 
Let me no longer follow
the commands that run them over
that allow us three or four straight norms at best
Unclamp my feet from marching
Free my toes
to find the subtle footholds
midst the wildness of the river
 
Free the rivers, too
and let us all please tumble brightly
down the perfect, wild, unchanneled 
course that we were born for
Let us know each other 
deeply, truly, freely
 
Bring my soul up out of Egypt
That I may worship
My Good.


©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2012
 
photo by Edward Mulhern