Tag Archives: dream

Interruptions

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interruptions

Any snag
in the loops of dream
can start your liberation

Though the smooth weave
you worked so hard to fashion
is now puckered,
Though gaping holes have opened
in your plans,
Though you feel tripped up, tangled
and abandoned,
Look up, for none of this
is what it seems

This is not the rupture of your good,
This is your revelation.
This is the way out
from your hard and dull pursuits,
This can begin your transformation

Look through —
There is a deeper order
that doesn’t run at odds
with who you long to be,
There’s an awakening
from toilsome drudgery,
There’s a release,
a time you see
There’s no need to go back and make repairs.
You never need to tend that dream again,
for you are free

©Wendy Mulhern
June 30, 2014

Whoosh

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Every time I think of it
it feels like the moment after
a tub of cold water was dumped
on my head —
The breath-arresting shock, the ragged
gasp, the rush of cold and wetness,
the persisting dripping,
rivulets pushing past my ears and eyes,
a pounding pulsing of my head and heart,
the tingle filling everything,
and the exhilaration as it clears . . .

It’s so astonishing
I keep on thinking of it,
keep on being dowsed with the surprise —
How I never grasped before
how much of what I thought was true
was just a ruse,
how long I’ve let myself be disempowered.
Shocking it is —
the stirrings of awakening
asserting the dissolving of a dream.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 11, 2013


Morning

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Waking up,
you start to see
that there’s no need to go back
among the scattered shards,
the steady ebbing of your fluids
and the halted breath
to find and try to rescue
all the fallen parts.

Nothing is broken
and your being
shines as fresh within this day
as it has always shone.
There is no tally
of all those wrongs,
the generations of remorse,
the shame.
It’s all gone
in this, the morning:
Your name is clear,
your loveliness the same.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 29, 2013


Preparation

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There are so many ways
this whole dream could end
that I’ve gone beyond worrying.
In the end, I have to take my stand,
have to be unmoved,
uncowed by all the threats,
because life is like that, I guess —
Seedlings make their stands
on impossible outcroppings.
Sometimes they grow anyway,
into big trees.

If everything changes
I will still 
do what seems best at the time,
still fight for life and love,
still be
whatever it is I am.
So my best preparation
is to know what that is
and live it,
fearlessly, fiercely,
with all my heart.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 16, 2013


A Most Important Thing

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At this time of life
depth seems a most important thing —
the balance weights that extend  
below the illusion we call the ground,
the ones that give us
dynamic presence
so we can’t be tumbled
from our own truth.

Though many forces
may push us flat against the ground,
we are not phased
for we rebound,
immediately realign
with what we are,
embody a circumference
that’s wider far
than what we had before believed.

We need this depth
to move with purpose
through the social daze,
We need this size 
to overcome the myth of death.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 7, 2013


Paradigm Collapse

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In that weightlessness
before the house’s falling,
after the struts were pulled out
one by one,
the structure growing ever weaker
though we hadn’t noticed

(distracted as we were
by the eventually frantic
clang of loud music
and waving of hands,
garish colors paraded
ever more urgently
to keep us from paying attention)

But it gets to the point
where each strut, as it’s removed,
may be the last —
The structure is swaying,
soon to twist and crumple
and when we see it there
in that weightless moment
before the fall,
We start to realize
This all has been a dream.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 22, 2013


A Dream

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The power started calling.
Its lines were well-developed —
vast networks underground —
and it started calling her.
Its call was stronger, more persistent,
than the voices of caution,
the voices of fear,
that said
this is not human,
you would betray humanity
to take it up.

And she knows she has to do it
so she goes —
follows its direction down suburban streets,
finds the corner place and reaches down
to heft the golden bricks.
The power comes up out of the earth
in swirls of white and gold.
A deep hole forms, and the swirls keep rising.
A woman in a windbreaker
stands beside her, resolute,
her jacket flapping in the rising of the power.
She says, But I need to stand in defense of love!
Don’t I need to stand in defense of love?
The voice says, Love doesn’t need to be defended.
She says, But I need to stand in defense of the earth!
Don’t I need to stand in defense of the earth?
The voice says,
The earth doesn’t need to be defended.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 3, 2013


Comparing notes

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When we all come back
from our respective dreams,
We’ll share the things we’ve learned
You’ll say, “I’ve got this down,”
and I will see, with admiration,
how you persevered
through the long parched miles
and the floods
that took the bridges out —
How you built, with your life,
a place on that land
where lush green could return.
And I’ll say, “I’ve got this down,”
and we’ll marvel at the parallels —
All our lives
through such different circumstances
Winning the same prize
Learning the same wisdom
Shining the same truth
right through our dreams.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 9, 2013


Awakening

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Another layer of dissolving dream
sits like mist a little distant from my eyes
I peer to see the sun — pale disk,
emerging
Asserting its dominion on the day

The mist, dispersing, opens out my vision
The ground, now oddly solid
sends its message through my soles:
This is the earth on which you have been walking
This is the contact that will find you whole

I realize that I’d wondered why, while grasping
at all those things, I never really held one
Or why in running towards those goals
I never reached them,
Why the teachers’ lessons
Felt confusing, hopeless, boring
Why I always plodded
When I felt I should be soaring —
Now I know.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 6, 2013


Wake up

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Wake up, wake up,
This is not your life —
It’s just that old dream,
The one that loops and loops
and never finds its resolution

Wake up, notice the signs
that this is just a dream:
The way you never get what you desire
The way it seems your only choice
is to feel empty
or fill the void with things you’re loath to do

Wake up — there’s more —
Your life is made
of stunning bands of chords and light
You’re vast as all those distant burning stars
Release this tiresome dream
and fill your sight
with what they tell your heart
of who you are.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 18, 2013