At Matthew’s Beach
the toddlers in their bright clothing
converge along the water’s edge.
Constellations of families
intersect orbits

Two small girls and one mom
have pink broad-rimmed hats
And the larger girl reaches her arms
in the water again and again
making circular splashes.
The smaller one
sits in the shallows —
they both have sodden skirts

A small boy cries unconsolably
because there’s a scratch
through the picture on his bucket
And his mother won’t stop
using it to get water
to wash her children’s feet

A young man with green sunglasses
and two small boys
and a wife
addresses me as lifeguard
and I have to tell him
(as I told the boy with the scratched pail)
that it’s not lifeguard season yet,
that I’m just here.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 5, 2014

I.
The coffee shop hopped
with bright wait staff
and cheerful locals
and earnest banter
about music and ways of seeing.
People moved
in the rhythms
of their expectations
and their relationships,
and one young woman
moved with the detached slow motion
of someone overcome
with an internal passion,
from which she looked out
and saw the world
as if it were a movie.

II.
On Lagoon Pond Road
we hear the whisper of last year’s grasses
and the warble of this year’s blackbirds,
while the strong north wind
that came in with rain last night
is sweetened by the strong sun,
and we walk in the sure comfort
of hands that know each other
while sand blows along the road
into my shoes.

III.
Home for breakfast
Five of us around the table
gobble popovers, and laugh —
A time like the brief passing sun
through a window pane
to bask in as long as it’s here.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 13, 2014

Paused before the mirror,
I watched myself be clothed
by the ever-moving light
filtered through pine boughs
swayed by the wind —
Half-square of window
across my neck, my chest

Fitting reminder
of what I can take with me
and what I can’t,
and what gifts
each moment may bring.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 26, 2014

I. Morning

I follow the sounds of your movement —
the wheelbarrow’s melodic trundle,
the slow squeal of the front door;
I feel the track of early sun
through the boughs of Douglas Fir —
the cool, the warm, the cool,
the bright, the more subdued

II. Evening

Now the moon
grows brighter as it rises,
The kettle’s mounting pitch approaches boil,
Piano music warbles on the radio,
The old man sits there — possibly he hears.

And you and I have worked
and we are tired, but satisfied —
The day has held us through its arc
and brought us, whole, to eventide.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 13, 2014