Tag Archives: daily living

After the Party

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I came back feeling sullied
and it was my own posture
that had sullied me —
crept into my old closet,
pulled out shrunken, moth-eaten clothes,
clothes that had failed in the past,
that had been stained —
Where was I looking
that I didn’t notice
it had put them on me?
I let them mold me
into the old stance, became
the one who craves and measures,
measures and craves,
seeks a bigger share
while believing she deserves
a smaller one,
forgets to connect,
goes home
feeling desperately alone.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 15, 2013


Coming in out of the fog

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It seemed, for a while
that my visage, too, was foggy;
me not quite solid —
not quite having the gravity
that draws momentum,
swings clearly,
finds spring and bounce,
sinks definitively
into its center

After a while —
A while of sleep,
to let my presence gather;
A while of leaving phantoms well alone
so they could slip away;
A while of not trying
to force my life colors —
of letting them rise
like streams, like tides —
Then the fog was gone
And I was home.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 12, 3013


How you are seen

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We don’t need all your actions to be perfect
There could be broken lines,
uncompleted sentences,
Places where intention drifted
into non-action

We don’t need to see the whole arc
Indeed, we all are artists
with our eyes,
And expertly connect
the most barely suggested edges
into one whole picture
in our minds

No need, indeed no use,
for you to backtrack,
to explain yourself,
to fix your story.
It probably
won’t change our picture, anyway.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 11, 2013


A small day

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It was a small day
In that all the holes were smaller:
There was no gasping
No gulping
No engulfing
No ragged rims
No yawning gaps
No giving birth
No daring whims
No stretching thin
No bursting forth
It was a more fine grained
More staid kind of day
Too small for triumph or trauma
Nothing to write home about,
Grandmother would say.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 8, 2013


Swimming

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I don’t want to ever again
stumble
amid the rocky mazes
of social mores
Or ever bark my shins
against my own obtuseness,
My failures to anticipate
how something I might say or do
may have a bad effect
on someone else.

The tide has risen
and I now move
in a different, kinder medium
Where, in the main,
my weight is born
by that in which I swim
And the soft currents we create
uphold a natural coordination.

I will insist on moving in this ocean.
If, again, the tide goes out
and if I find myself
marooned amidst the ruins
of expectations,
I’ll stay still and watchful
Tenacious as a mussel
till the tide returns
and I can swim again.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 4, 2013


Reflections on being stood up by three different people who had made appointments to view our rental house

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Consideration,
in your calculus,
may not be something that you owe
to strangers —
People you have never met
and may never need to meet,
if you turn out
to not require their services.

And maybe those who have it
know it’s more of something
that you owe yourself —
Integrity in how you interact with others.

I, too, was young once,
and inconsiderate,
and never wrote to thank
the lady who once put me up,
and then sent me a gift,
and I never replied.
I think I thought it didn’t really matter
since she was old
and likely soon to die.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 1, 2013


Laundry

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Here in these world-crossings
it seems important
(though I swear, it is not!)
that one’s clothes be clean
and free of spot
and so
although I know
for this old dweller in a former time
there is no way to make him notice
make him care
I treat his clothes with stain remover
as a matter of course
so we can be more comfortable
to see him walk
in this disinfected world
that is no longer his.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 29, 2013


Episode

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Where did you go?
Was it a casual drift —
the molecules of your thought.
having lost cohesion,
dispersing
till the paths of your coherence
fell away
And you were left stranded
on a much earlier shore
where thought had long ago solidified?

We tried to pull you back
Remind you of the last ten years
The last twenty
The bridge back to the now
from what you last remembered
But the lines we tossed are tenuous —
You still seem lost, unsure
of where you are or what you’re doing here.

We hope that
once again
A night of sleep
will wash your tablet clear
And to its surface
Reset all the strands of your coherence
Retie the cords that hold you in our sphere.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 21, 2013


Saturday Morning, Third Place Books

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I watch you, my neighbors,
most unknown to me —
watch your lights rise up.
You come here for your joys,
for your reunions,
in your free time, for your friends
and for your hobbies

And as you walk
your bodies
show the many twists
the light needed to make
coming up through the burdens,
the rejections,
through the sense of failure
and the strategies you’ve used,
the resolutions, the regimes,
the marks which, though I can’t decipher them
hint of a tale
recounting why your light came forth
in this particular way.

And if you are like me,
You likely think
your story is invisible
And maybe you are right
For maybe, in the end
All these burdens will dissolve
And all of us will walk here unencumbered
by all the weights our bodies now betray

And we will see each other
as we now, in our best moments
see the ones we love:
Redeemed by light,
Brave and shining through their day.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 19, 2012


Slow motion

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In slow motion
Everything moves with grace
Even something shattering —
the crazed fracture lines
forming, in an instant
along the paths
determined by the structure
that the molecules assumed
when the material was forged

In slow motion
There is grace
in the crumbling and falling
of an item
Each particle becoming its own agent
Free to fall along the course
that it, alone, is pulled
To roll, tumble, bounce
and settle, finally
in the place
where it has come to rest.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 17, 2013