Mind’s Eye View

In my mind-picture of you
you were painted
with a bright palette —
yellows and oranges and greens —
exuberant color splashing
from your hands
which stretched out open,
the joy of your creating
crackling between your fingers
great spreads of overlapping hues
rising from you
filling up the canvas
and I knew
This is a true picture of you
Something you’ve always been
Something you will again
learn how to be.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 13, 2012


Beauty

(From the biking philosophers’ notebook)
 
Something compels you
Perhaps the way a substance
moves beneath your fingertips
and you can mold it
Perhaps the interplay of laws
as seen in intersecting ripples
Perhaps the strength of structure
and the genius of form
You must engage with it
You have to notice
 
Or maybe it’s the summer-long progression
of how a seed pod forms and opens out
Maybe the way a person thinks or moves
Maybe the tracks of time, the marks of history
Or the recurring changes through each day
 
No matter—
When a thing calls you
and you follow it because you must
And you throw yourself into the quest
to really master, really grasp it
And insist on holding on until it changes you,
You bring forth beauty.
 
©Wendy Mulhern
August 17, 2012
 
 

Gardens

So many things in my garden are bolting

Racing against death
Preparing a dual departure:
Packaging their life into capsules for the future,
Letting their stalks fall back into brown

In the face of my neglect
The plants perform their dramas
Weeds stake out their turf
Flowers stretch and bow extended stems
Bees and rain bestow their ministrations

Some year, I think, my garden may be tended
Each tender plant well fed
with soil amended,
The weeds, with gentle firmness
kept in hand
The flowers celebrated, blooming
lushly, just as planned

But I’m distracted by another realm
Where, like fennel weeds
My dreams extend their gangly fronds
And wave about, seedy and untended
When I visit them, I have no clue
Which ones to pull, which ones to prune
Or what to do to garner greater flourish

So neither garden gets my full attention
And both grow wild, and dry, and spare
But still, in both, the sun-drenched flowers
Summon me, and touch me there.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 26, 2012



Together













If we breathe together —

the whole earth —
in grand and rushing intakes,
curling into every cranny,
long, sustained releasing,
returning and returning

If we fly together
riding on the currents 
and creating them
swooping, swirling, echoing each other
cushioned by the air, ecstatic, gliding

If we hum together
all the toning of our integral vibrations
finding unforeseen harmonics, deep support
joining in the long reverberation
of all we are, and all we’ve been before

Then we shall later walk enchanted
through the richness of each moment’s breath
knowing that no gesture goes unanswered
each movement met by all the ones we’re with.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 8, 2012



Monday, downtown

Monday Downtown (background music: Isaac Shepard “Before Dawn”)


Oh, humanity!
Working at your tired charades
Moving through so many empty boxes
Desiccated corridors
Courses without meaning

Look how amazing you are!
Look how, even when the rules are cast
to close out any purpose, light or joy
You still find ways to shine:
Within this skewed account of life
your light slips through the chinks
and though at times refracted
blazes forth
Makes us maybe take a while to notice
all the places where it is suppressed
Just think: if we were free
what brilliance we would show

It is our destiny
We will prevail
We will shine clear
We’ll banish all the false demands
The failed array of hoops, constrictive bands
Deny the faulty purposes
that disappointed us
Swing free
on the strength of our unstoppable
creative rush!

©Wendy Mulhern
March 19, 2012


On Fire

Throw another log into the furnace
Pump the bellows, let the heat keep rising
For, whether on purpose or by chance
It seems I am committed
Open to alloys
Open to alchemy
Whatever will meld
Whatever may emerge
That which will grow stronger
as it melts and flows together
That which will arise transformed
to something unimagined
Though the steams arise and cloud my sight
Creative sparks in circling outward flight
Will forge a more expansive view
Herald the birth of something new
While anything that’s burning off
consigned to ash, will float away
without my even noticing:
The fire is where I am today.


©Wendy Mulhern
November 3, 2011