The words in my head
don’t need to face emptiness –
they are always ready to play
My mind fills in the images –
it can chain any two words together
and take them up the winding street
paved with tawny bricks
in the places of dreams
which may or may not be extant
in the world of my daily walk
It is only in the realm of judgment
that I may decide
I have nothing to say.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 7, 2023
(for my sister, biking philosopher)
A long sleep with deep dreams
delivered me, rested, into the day –
threads of companionship,
trailing along into the dark morning,
accompanied my tasks,
their happiness settling things
into a balance, where a breath
can set things in motion,
where they still move
according to their multiple connections,
and still remain, more so than when in stillness,
exactly what they are.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 13, 2023
I had a dream about
you playing with bears in the surf,
showing me a video afterwards,
the push of your hand
against the long wet fur,
a large black rock,
waves gliding in
It was affectionate
and so appropriate,
a thing to share,
a thing to be proud of you for,
salty and wet and unafraid,
riding your love like a wave.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 14, 2022
You might be borne
by golden jet stream
to float high, in your dream,
among the canyons,
you might dream that you wake up
to find yourself snagged by brambles,
and be amused
You might trace some of those images
back to some waking moments
of the day before –
(the color of a copper beach,
a volunteer putting a brambly vine
into a pail)
The important thing is joy –
can you take it with you
through the dream and out the other side?
Are your moments kindled
to ignite more? If you need a spark,
please take one from me –
I have plenty.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 7, 2022
The entire world
and how I know it,
and how it knows me,
may be something completely other
than what I suppose,
but the ability to finally
get the air under my wings
and hold myself aloft in dreams
brings a state of relaxation
with enough renewal in it
to bring enchantment
to my vision of the day.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 3, 2022
Sometimes I want to cry
for no reason,
sometimes music that sounds like coming home
will bring the tears –
I don’t know why, a kind of longing, maybe
Sometimes I want to slide back
into a beloved book, one I’ve read
more than once. Just let
all the important problems
I seek so earnestly to solve
wait until morning,
until a festival of dreams
has washed my mind clean
and I’m ready to start again.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 8, 2022
The days are full –
we come to the end of them
and fall back into ourselves,
drifting at an angle
through the colors behind closed eyes,
feeling the weavings of consciousness
float loose. My pen stops.
Could be quite some time I’ve sat here
in the weightless comfort of repose.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 3, 2022
Wood grain on cedar boards
curving parallel,
path of cirrus clouds across the sky,
the shift in and out of dream
after a day’s work outside,
the transition from maroon to pink
in peach and plum blossoms –
not the same but similar
in the poignancy of their pale colors.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 24, 2022
When I woke from my nap,
words kept darting around
like rapid eye movement,
stitching images together –
sense from nonsense, or vice versa
I had closed my eyes for just five minutes
but suddenly it was ten thirty
and I had no reason
to be up anymore
except to catch some fleeting words
and put them on a page.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 15, 2022
And when the day’s tough times were over,
the dogging demons not so much defeated
as dispersed, not ever seeming
to be obedient, but simply passing
outside of my attention,
after the fire was long gone
but the stone was still warm,
the waxing gibbous moon
peered through the clouds,
bright enough to cast a shadow,
and dark blue patches showed
between the clouds,
and nothing that had bothered me
was worth taking to bed
where everything waits
to be recombined.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 16, 2021