Tag Archives: death

Mortality

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Mortality rattles along
like an old cart.
Wheels may fall off,
or a side, or the bottom
may fall through

And we are asked to think about
where we will take it
before it fails utterly –
if we will trundle on rough roads,
or seek out asphalt, or park ourselves
in some garage

But there are no choices here.
It’s all the same. Mortality lacks
the spirit of what we are,
so it can never satisfy
or even be relevant

Day by day I turn away
from these questions.
Day by day I walk my feet
in steps of freedom.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 21, 2023

Citadel

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It could be fall.
What could befall?
I will not allow
the course of my life
to be turned

And yet land falls beneath me,
a sinkhole, a swallowing,
the sudden downward shift  –
how to maintain footing?
And where can I land?

An image has been forming,
appearing, as out from fog,
solid, but only sometimes seen –
a citadel, a rock to stand on,
a place that will not shift,
that will stay with me,
whatever changes ripple through,
whatever seems to disappear

I will learn to feel it
under my feet,
I’ll learn to find it,
and I’ll stay here.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 29, 2022

Where is your sting?

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You may count down the numbers,
take us out one by one,
you may flood or burn us
thousands at a time,
you may boast your power,
you may crow your victory,
but no way can you actually win

You say we’re decimated,
but we have something you don’t have,
and never can, something you can never take from us

You boast of deadness,
but that means nothing,
for you are dead, and what we have is life –
it’s just a card trick
to seem to take our numbers,
for life is something you have never taken.
You may seem fearsome,
you may rage on and on,
but we will still be standing when you’re gone.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 23, 2022

Mortality

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If I die, I will die of mortality  –
there is no other cause of death. 
Other things people might call it
are so many irrelevancies  –
whether I die of grief or mistrust or fear,
or of the planet’s burgeoning despair,
or of somebody’s anger, or someone else’s greed,
or of toxicity of any sort, bleeding
through the boundaries of being

All these so-called causes are just distractions,
for without mortality, I will not die.

Well then, let me consider
exactly what I am. Let me consider it
every hour. What are the colors and the flavors
of immortal moments?
What is my practice of living them?
It’s not about not wanting to die,
but of yearning to finally really live.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 3, 2022

Plans

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I can’t plan for my mortality  –
the very stuff of it
falls apart like silt –
nothing I can build with
has anything to do with it

I can’t plan either
for your mortality  –
I have to live as if
we have eternity to learn
the perfect grace for which we daily strive –
it is the only way that I can pick up
these essential strands
of all we care about,
and weave them day by day.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 3, 2022

Trajectories

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I will not entertain
plans to bump down
an unforeseen hill, to land
in whatever lump the landscape leaves me

Lots of stories say we’re born to die,
but I don’t know if anyone
really believes that

It may tug and tag along,
an unacknowledged fear,
it may get an honored place
in one’s belief system

Bit I will not let go
of the darting silver sense
of living in a deeper liberty,
and every day I live,
I’ll strive to rise
to where we know
we’re never born
and never die.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 18, 2022

Bargain

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It’s not like you get to bargain
with death. If you give it one little wink,
it will have you. It will take you
on its own terms, not on yours

But it’s not that death can win.
The enduring multiplicity of life
will keep doing as it always does,
branching out the possibilities.
Put all attention there, and you, too,
will keep on growing.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 24, 2022

The Old Maple

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This is proof
that there is no arc of death,
that death is not a place
where life ends up

This is proof that life
is always what’s here to notice  –
that in spite of death sentences,
life is what speaks to us

Before, it seems, all we could notice
was that the tree was dying,
but now, each spring, each year,
we celebrate persistent life –
these leaves, as fresh as ever,
coming out gracious
beside the hollowing trunk.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 12, 2021

The End of the World

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I reckon many of us
would not mind
the end of the world —

The un-quibble-able finality of it,
the sudden change,
the necessary dropping
of the hundred little burdens
we each carry through our days

The excitement of it,
the call of something deeper,
long sleeping, in our beings,
something that would rise up
if only in that crashing moment

The hope is that it would be quick,
not some drawn out monotony of suffering
(though even there we would be honed,
and even there we’d mount the struggle
to survive)

The hope is
we would see
our loved ones again,
and laugh together
about the long strange trip.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 14, 2020

Inkling

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It may look like death
when someone breaks through the skin
of the world, of the dream —
they may seem to fall out of it
and others may mourn

It’s only when you look closely
at the hole they made,
when, for a moment,
you see the light streaming in,
you might get the inkling
there’s something beyond this shell,
you might start trying
to learn what it is.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 14, 2019