Go to sleep, to wake up
from the bad dream of the day,
the stewing fear, torment
of being cast as enemy
I’ve told myself to not be taken in,
but evidently I have failed
This is not my battle,
This is not my battle,
This is not my battle,
Let it go.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 29, 2023
Waiting as the cymbal’s tremble
moves from crash to dissipation,
waiting in the space defined
by its detonation,
waiting to see where I’ll find myself
once the sound has settled
I could go on, then, as if
my inner membranes had not arrested their normal breathing
as they reverberated.
I could make a big story about it,
a problem, a set of things
that need redress
Or I could let the silence become attuned,
let it deepen,
go with it to the primal order,
align with trees, and night, and stone,
and seek the sight of stars.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 26, 2023
I guess it’s better
that there’s no one here
to aid and abet my righteous sense of hurt,
no one to be an echo chamber,
magnifying what I say,
making these perspectives seem
to come from everywhere,
no one to give me comfort
in standing in a false place
So i have no choice
but to let that picture fall away,
no choice but to let my feet
reach deep into truth
and anchor there.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 12, 2023
In this fractured dream world
there is no is,
no state of being right,
no state of being
a certain kind of person
There are no facts about the past,
there is no structure of
the current state of things
However long we grapple with
our and each other’s
version of the truth,
however justified our story seems,
we won’t get closer
to anything that represents us fairly
Through the fractures in this dream world,
sometimes
light can be seen –
Oh light, be my justice,
enlightening me,
Oh light, be my vision
and teach me to see.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 21, 2021
The answer will come
at right angles to the conflict,
it will not take sides,
it will startle all sides to silence
There is a way out
of what seems most intractable —
it is the knowing
that we aren’t caused by one another
and that our cause will speak within,
to each of us,
and lift us up and show us how to go.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2019