Tag Archives: dream

Acquittal

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This is not incremental change,
not resolutions, not a trajectory,
not a thing to chart and measure progress
and feel good today, or else feel bad

This is the dropping of everything —
unholy mess, colosal clatter —
this is the shock of light occasioning
complete disjunction from what went before

This is the calm beyond the conflagration
where you find out it never really mattered,
this is the waking up after your dream
where morning’s truth provides your sure defense.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 12, 2018

Dream Light

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Where does the light in dreams come from,
here in the dark woods, in the dark cabin,
when rain is falling on the metal roof
and all the lamps are out?

How is it that I can know you in the dream
when I don’t really see you,
when we’re conversing
while both looking at the same object?

What is presence anyway,
and what is absence?
How do we see each other,
how are we seen?
This world is more mysterious
than I imagined, and vaster,
since it also houses the realm of dreams.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 10, 2018

Clean

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In my loved communion
with hot water at end of day,
I think of this melting
and the next one
(as sight and feeling
drift into dream)
the necessary daily dropping
of all the contexts
that seemed so fixed
and so important,
to let the sweet unburdened
energy of being
once again assert its rightful place.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 1, 2018

The edge before sleep

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In the view behind my eyelids
everyone kept walking through
with marked purpose.
They made stories for themselves
out of the ambient sound

It didn’t take long
for me to drift away
nor yet to jolt back
like falling off a cliff
awakeness catching me
just enough to set me down

When there is nothing new
in what the day has to report
there is always the allure
of the edge before sleep
and thought’s opening
to the vast expanse of dream.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 28, 2018

Fringe of Day

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Over the edge and down
into the suspended space,
the color — rings of shifting brown,
a lazy torus rolling, drifting outwards

This is a picture
of where I landed
after a day in which I wondered
what I had done in it,
how my work had seemed so short
and why I was so tired

I had to acknowledge
there were no real thoughts there —
just images,
and a desire for sleep.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 14, 2018

Mindful

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Put your mind
in a place where it will dream,
let it be a wide open space

You will have, after all,
all the freedom you give yourself,
you will be able to get around
the things you stumbled on before

Let your dreams be teachers —
Even if you don’t remember
where you were,
you may be able to bring back
a way of understanding,
you may bring back
the potent calm you walked in.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 7, 2018

Imagine

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What if we discovered
we’d been, all this time,
strung up in nets,
our juices harnessed
to do things we would always sense
were sideways to our desires,
so that we felt the shadow
of regret, of disappointment
dogging our every act

If we should learn
this is not our purpose,
this is not our true companion –
we are not designed
to do things that always
cause somebody pain

If we could feel
our energies released
from those old nets,
slipping through like bars of light,
gaining strength and brightness
with their freedom

What joy, what power
we would wield! slicing away
everything unmerciful, unkind,
gathering the clan of all of us
into our rightful, foreordained design.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 7, 2017

Arriving

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Dozing into the arrival
at our land, passing between
cliffs of clouds and blue banked sky,
needed desired rain
and needed desired sun
and the question of which
would attend our arrival

Eyes closed, the landscape still rolled out,
the narration borrowed
from some other world:
“They grasped each other
by their suppositions,”
I heard, before opening my eyes

The sun shone through the rain,
mist rose up from the road
and blew across. The dream
was also worth watching
after the long trundle,
blurring the question
of where, exactly,
we were arriving.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 18, 2017

Drift

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I hear, in the echo of distant crow caws,
a time link, a lacuna
that takes me quickly back east
to early summer mornings,
my vision now split

in the double exposure
so often engendered
when twilight comes late
and dream drifts
could call it morning

till I come back, startled,
to here and now,
watching my perceptions
settle like fallen petals.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 17, 2017

Not Too Late

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It’s not too late
to feel blessed,
though eyes be turned toward sleep,
though goals be given up on,
though consciousness
has wandered off
into various fields
where grasses
are going to seed
and small flowers
hold court with many
peculiar bugs

It’s not too late to be blessed —
look — you’re there already
in the sweet breath of summer night,
in the dream welcoming call
of warm blankets and chilly wind.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 7, 2017