Transition times
take on a leanness
in which there’s little room
for leisure

The lines of purpose stretch out,
and time accelerates
down their smooth curves

Sometimes spaces in between the action
seem empty
since there have been no still pockets
in which to gather things to do
for fun or self development

Other things are neglected, too —
tasks of low priority,
routine but non-essential,
projects that require an incubation time

There is none of that
in the rapid flow
towards something
we cannot yet fully see,
some waterfalls to plunge
before we reach the quiet pools.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 25, 2015

It is a day of no obligations
and no great ambitions
and enough heat to arrest
in mid stride
most anything we might try

Yet we have managed
to do a few things
and get some water
to our seedling dreams
and as the blessed coolness
stirs the evening,
we will sleep well
and grow a little newer.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 3, 2015

I must be tired from leaning forward,
he says. Too much living in the future,
in the plans, in the questions
of how to make everything
come out right

Yes, let’s take a break,
let’s lean into the day, ride for awhile
on the motes of the moment
and the three-caw council of crows
and letting it all go,
even the leaning.

Let the day come to me, he says.
At its own pace.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 28, 2015

Things can spring apart,
blocks burst loose and tumble —
there can be rubble,
and all the places
things used to fit
can be obliterated

You can have a sense of
no order, no place
to put anything, no place
to sit down even,
no rest for the insistent
and erratic
loopings of your mind

You can call it
a waste howling wilderness,
and that may be a clue

For everything that matters to you
is held where nothing that can fall apart
will touch it.
Its inviolability is proof
of what’s real,
its presence
what will lead you
all the way out of the fray
and on to sweet abiding peace.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 14, 2015

or Getting the Backhoe out of the Mud

Today, in shelter from the rain,
wet clothes hanging and slumped around,
wet gloves and boots
not getting dryer in the damp air,
I perceived that I am a firemaker

I felt the heat my body makes,
its quiet fire within
working the magic of chemicals
with deft precision

I thought about the fire my kind has learned to coax
from tinder bundles, wood and friction
(for which I carry memory
and latent skill)

Then there’s the fire that we have later
turned to big machines, which,
though they now seem to hold a power
of their own,
must still be subject to our mastery of fire

And quick as that, I understood
that we could not be stuck
although the backhoe sat
enmired in mud, its wheels dug in

I knew that we are firemakers
and so have power
to move the things we’ve made from fire,
that with the same intention
and persevering focus
and hard committed work,
we could do it —
and so it was.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 22, 2015