Tag Archives: daily living

Deliverance Prayer

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Deliverance Prayer (background music “The Blessing” by Isaac Shepard)

Bring my soul up out of Egypt
Walk me step by patient step
out of the patterns that enslave me
Release me from the lockstep
that doesn’t look
that is afraid to seek the kinship of a smile
 
Teach me to spin out on the leaf edge
of the wind
and twirl into the knowing
of the infinite variety —
Intricacies which Life has ever blessed
 
Let me no longer follow
the commands that run them over
that allow us three or four straight norms at best
Unclamp my feet from marching
Free my toes
to find the subtle footholds
midst the wildness of the river
 
Free the rivers, too
and let us all please tumble brightly
down the perfect, wild, unchanneled 
course that we were born for
Let us know each other 
deeply, truly, freely
 
Bring my soul up out of Egypt
That I may worship
My Good.


©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2012
 
photo by Edward Mulhern
 

Soporific Rain

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Soporific rain
Robs the morning
Of its earliest pursuits
Yet the sweetness
of the night remains
Wraps itself around my dreaming music

Languidly we move
There is no way
The clock can catch us
in its marching regimen
We’ll slide in languid sloth into the day
Let later light, in its own time
attract us

The day has duties that we dare not shirk
But we can meet them softly, without stress
Yes, we’ll take on all our needed work
But through a film of rain-kissed happiness.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 1, 2012



Sadness

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Sadness is the need to close a loop
Something wanting to be given
Something not received
An uncompleted sequence
Brought up short

Your yearning runs
Along the broken circle
Time and again arrested by the gap
It throws its spark in stark desire
Attempts to arc across the emptiness

It tries, it waits, it paces, tries again
It falls back in exhaustion, gathers strength
You send it till it leaps
And reaches the exalting joy
Or till you give up on the trial
And turn away.


©Wendy Mulhern
January 9, 2011


Mother of tears

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In this nacre place
Mother of tears
I wait to make a pearl

From this rough grain
of failed communication, pain
Something smooth and shiny

Mother of tears
Form from this nameless sadness
Something —
Something my soft pulp
can roll against
No longer be caught up
No longer need
to coat with layers of thought

Form this foreign thing
into our essence
Iridescent, luminous
A worthy gift to bring up from the night
A pearl to lift up meekly to the light.


©Wendy Mulhern
January 5, 2011



The Forest of Two Worlds

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What is the forest of two worlds, 
you ask.
Let me take you there
Where with one liquid step, you disappear
from all the ways you measure, count and tally
from every disappointment—
all the ways you’re sorry
Tasks you think precede your satisfaction
Annoyances that bait you for reaction

In the forest’s second world
You find yourself entrancingly aware
of everything that sings, 
all that unfolds 
in brightness, 
and your strong deep care
for life that pulses with you,
For each breath you share, 
and what the sharing gives you
and the grateful prayer
that leads you to acknowledge
The perfection of your place
In here and now, in union
And in blessed grace.


©Wendy Mulhern
December 29, 2011



The Day After

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Our sorry state: we are distracted by
Cacophony of year-end clutter
All the things that fell and lodged
In places where it’s hard to clean them out.

Too much packaging that came with gifts
Plastic that we need to throw away
Scrumpled paper lurking 
in the corners behind chairs
Backlog on to do lists for the day

The sun that showed for just five minutes
Prior to diving into overcast
Is heading downwards now behind the clouds
The dark of early night will overtake us fast

And if we scramble, maybe we can overcome
The tasks and trash and distant blare of commerce
To find the peace we hoped the season promised
Establish order and reclaim our home.


©Wendy Mulhern
December 26, 2011


Blessed darkness, sacred light

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Here where the symbols
have worn thin—
Thin enough for holes
and transparent patches
Broken threads dangling by threads
Small connections lost
throughout the fabric

Here where the symbols have worn thin
from overuse, and being used to carry
that which shares no essence
with their purpose
That which seeks to co-opt 
all we value

Here where darkness offers
welcome respite from the blaring signs
I seek to bow my head and close my eyes—
To take the time
for that deep stillness
and the darkness of my waiting silence
to form a frame to see the sacred light.


©Wendy Mulhern
December 23, 2011



Self Soothing

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I.

From the spun out galaxies

They are coming home

The stars they flung in wild abandon
They are bringing back
The canvasses they painted
They have taken down
And if they come back cold
And if they come back tired
And if they come back desolate
Here are arms to hold them
Here is warmth to radiate
Deep enough so they can leave
All the long and fruitless miles
All the hopes that came back empty
Deep enough to let them rest
Till they can gain new life as stories
All of my questers
I let them come back
And that which comforts me
Will integrate us all.

II.
Some of them are asking me
Did we really have to bring back
All the stars?
Maybe we left some out there—
Could that be OK?
What if there are really whole swaths of them
Shining up there with the slender, slender crescent moon
While frost settles gently on rooftops?
And maybe space really is
As big as we mapped it
And maybe you can really have it!
—Hush, children.  Sleep for now.


©Wendy Mulhern
December 22, 2011



Journey

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I have been on an adventure
Coming back, I could call it
A time of input
Or a time of utter uselessness
(No to do’s accomplished)
I had to take time
To let the impulse dissipate
And return to the world of
All that I’ve earned
And all that I owe
And what I pull daily
Through the hours —
That which I have called reality —
So I regain my steadiness
So become grounded.
But listen!
There is a different world
Or there is more to this one
Than I had imagined
Each day full
Of possible mind-corridors
With their secret bright
Bursts of delight
And sweetness.
I can go there
And bring these fruits back
They can adorn my moments
I need never be prosaic again.


©Wendy Mulhern
December 20, 2011



Distance

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We glided in boxes
Carefully separate
All of our movements
Elaborate jockeying
Choreographed to allow
No touch
Our only signal
The desperate gleam
Of hope for some contact
Through the very words
That kept us apart
And the shy aloofness
Of propriety and habit.
(Habits as old as our parents,
Learned from them, who no doubt
Learned them, not on purpose
From their own)
When all we really wanted
Was the boxes to dissolve
The boxes of manner
The boxes of habit
The boxes of clothes
So we could melt together
And be one.


©Wendy Mulhern
December 17, 2011