After the whirlwind engagement,
the kiss of possibility,
we wait to settle down –
we float in that unweighted space
achieved through swift
acceleration and release –
a practice place for astronauts
and anyone who needs to feel no gravity –
anyone who needs
to learn a realignment
independent of the forces
of other fervent orbits
Anyone who yearns to move
in concert with the whole,
recenter to the source
that tunes us all.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 25, 2023
Kindle my candle –
incandescent kindness,
my heart, my hearth,
my earth, my art,
my kin, my ken,
enchanting.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 22, 2023
Grace fills this room.
All the things we’ve tried to do and be,
to be ourselves, to be together
in the dance of harmony,
contribute to the structure
of the embracing sphere
But we are held
within the stronger power
that draws our impulse,
bends our arcs
to make them flow together
exultant in the affirmation
that chimes through every touch,
bidding us relax,
ensuring our success.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 24, 2023
And suddenly today
I feel the way I felt
when we were young –
grown up and setting out to find
whatever was the journey that was called our lives,
and coming back together for a holiday,
the major strife of growing up behind us,
creating home with laughter, as families do
Today my sense of failing falls away,
and I see we have been living well –
each of us has our own sufficient pile
of life lived
And I see there is a grace
that doesn’t measure things like that –
grace that unfolds second by second
through all the seconds
in which we live.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 12, 2023
I find myself connected
as paths fan out dendritic
like breath within, like hyphae,
like the T in Boston
I find myself suffused with such affection
as this life moves through me,
filling and sustaining me,
the lines of generations
deepening connection,
the web of shared perception
annulling time.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 14, 2023
I suddenly saw
the events in our lives
like the curve of the smoke of a candle –
no need to remember exactly,
no need to pin down its shape
For we have been here forever –
before the mountains, before the earth,
and if we’ve ever known each other,
it follows that we always have,
and always will,
in the timeless mindfulness of being
This is the only field vast enough
to hold my love for you who I called daughter,
and you who I’ve called Mom –
think of us all together in boundlessness –
what laughter! and what power!
©Wendy Mulhern
March 29, 2023
Even when things aren’t passed down directly,
father to son, mother to daughter,
even when things that happen
tear great holes
in community, in continuity,
these threads still have a way of catching,
clasp on some level
that was never severed,
and the elixir of life
refreshes itself,
giving rise to what feels like
brand new light,
though it’s been here, latent, all along.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 25, 2023
These could be memories,
these could be dreams –
astonishing how they are still here –
we can bring them back to mind
so many years later
But even more amazing –
how my thoughts make pictures
of your words –
you climbing trees
and galloping horses across the field,
the wind through pines
lifting your hair
caught in a shaft of sun,
the sudden recognition of presence
holding you all by itself,
hallowing you in that private expansive moment,
leaving its promise
of blessing and peace.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 22, 2023
These rhythms run so deep.
Beneath my conscious thought or gesture,
mine and yours have found each other
before I even noticed they were there
It could be our own private world,
could be what marks us as bone of bones.
It’s easy to fall into patterns
where these lines so seamlessly flow
Could be I come by that honest –
these ways I am me,
these things others see,
and it could be these rhythms
are how we’re entrained
to the grand sweeping rhythm of All.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 15, 2023
See these strong shining lines
made of gladness for each other,
hearing of each other’s times,
imagining the brightness that must attend
such a bounty of family ties
I am glad to come rich to the conversation,
able to offer my happy account,
the better to help you feel easy,
the better to mirror sincerely
the glow that your sharing conveys.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 27, 2022