Tag Archives: daily living

Summer Snapshot

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It’s spider season
which may not help against aphids.
It’s a time when beauty pushes
against the back side of my eyes,
suggesting tears —
Beauty of guitar sound through the open window,
cloaked enough by outside noise
to only come in snatches
that remind me of the boy inside,
bittersweetly soon to leave for college;
Beauty of slightly drought-stressed flowers
heading towards seed.
It all looks rather wild,
and the yield is less than perfect
but the bees don’t care.
Lazy beauty of summer
leaves me with some scarcely defined longing —
Maybe the plants can understand it more than I,
Maybe the crows know.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 3, 2013


Evening

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Hard work can make my mind go blank —
a pleasant wordlessness
of well-used muscles,
the satisfying glow of tasks completed.

I took my emptiness
out to the counsel of the cloudy sky
where trees, assembled, 
marked their soft assent
to what the night would bring

The sound sphere was inhabited
by freeway’s roars and passing planes,
gravel turning under wheels of cars,
the parting barking of dogs
before they went indoors,
the final squawk of random birds,
and the quiet chink of wind chimes near the house.

All’s well.
The night will come
and we will sleep
while trees stand guard,
and in my dreams 
or in the early light of morning
may come my words’ return.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 1, 2013


Wilderness

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Walking here
I have to admit
I don’t know anything —
Nothing I could package
and deliver as a
Thing That I Have Learned.
I have no map for myself —
No one’s words hover at my shoulder,
especially not my own —
no conclusion I can make,
no lesson I can take from here on forward.
In what way can I say I know anything,
of life, of love, of death?

Yet when I close my eyes
and follow my breath
into the undergrowth of dream,
I feel like a wilderness
and it feels good.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 30, 2013


Centrifuge

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Hold my hand,
for we are spinning
and I feel the power
of the centrifuge:
We could scatter,
we could be adrift,
we could grow cold.
Hold my hand
and we will be a wheel,
Hold my hand —
we’ll be a constellation;
With the force
of our collective gravity,
we’ll keep this warmth;
With our collective radiance
we will cohere.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 28, 2013


A Moment of Silence

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(for Chris and Aviva, or maybe for the rest of us)

A moment of silence
for the parting of worlds,
a separation I don’t understand
though it is frequent —

It’s like when a stone
drops into water —
the ripples spread out on the surface
as the water is opened
and then closes
with the blip of its round edges
coming back together

But the stone is in a different world —
the medium is thicker
and it falls more slowly
down and down
even as our marking of it
moves out and out

I can only imagine them —
all the edges of awareness
keenly open
as they enter
the next adventure,
perpendicular to that which we perceive.

A moment of silence
to let the stone fall through,
and feel the ripple.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 27, 2013

No Regrets

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No regrets
for life falls like water
down its course —
The same law always pulls us,
The same law always rights us —
What we choose in any instant
is the product
of precisely where we were,
and from precisely where we are
we always choose
what seems essential

No regrets —
in the wild space of now,
suspended in air,
in vapor or in free fall,
in current or in back flow,
or sucked up in the taproot of a plant,
We still are held
in Life’s law,
and Life will always see us through.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 21, 2013


Good Times

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We came riding down
chutes of laughter
like kids on a water slide —
great swoops of bright sound
cascading and splashing
and we felt renewed,
and we set each other off
again and again,
perhaps less for amusement
than for how it made us feel —
ready to scamper around
and up the ladder again.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 15, 2013


The rhythm of summer

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Everything is moving in the rhythm
of summer —
sound of wind chimes,
scent of privet,
transfixing flit of
not-quite-random insects,
play of light on spider webs,
crows in conversation —

There is something to learn from this,
something to take with me
from the unhurried connection of events,
the space between
that’s long enough for slack,
supple so it ripples smoothly.

Here where it’s too hot
for spiking urgency
or any worry,
things still progress
prodigiously,
with ample room
to take their perfect time.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 30, 2013


End of Game

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All ye all ye in free!
So we were called home
at the edge of dusk
when the lights were starting to glow
in the houses,
and the evening’s cool
was softening the sky
and we would all return
to the separate circles
of those lights, and our families.

Well, it’s getting to be
the end of the game
and all the chosen roles
and all the tokens
are swirling down the vortex
towards their fall —
What will we hear of next?
It’s a strange thought
that everything might be falling
but we can’t feel it
any more than we feel the earth’s spin
But there are signs
that the whole game is ending
so we are looking up
ready to be called home.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 9, 2013