What is it all made of? –
these thoughts, these colors,
this shimmer of wind-touched trees and water,
these family ties,
presence of others I feel,
like air through my fingers while riding no-handed
after they’ve gone –
a latch remains open
and a door swings somewhere in my mind.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 28, 2022
The cushion of family,
soft as morning fog,
hugs everyone
Smiles are harvested easily
for what they feed us,
and life is celebrated,
not just by us
but by everything touched
in these moments of being,
this connectivity that holds us all.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 21, 2022
I feel fine.
The lines of my mind
are smooth – no ruffles
of family dramas
I have been playful,
I have been thoughtful,
I’ve laughed, and talked maybe
a bit too much, but with no painful consequence.
I’ve been misty, but only a little,
and not when anyone saw
Turning the light on inside
has changed the outside color
from blue to black.
Crickets and a cool breeze
preside over nightfall.
Seems like wherever I am
is where I belong, for now.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 18, 2022
This morning I let myself imagine
a happy future – nothing special, really –
just a family, and some bubbling love
and easy music – just the overflow
of joy engendered in simple presence,
children, and parental bonds
showing life to be so far beyond
what could be bought, or sold, or planned.
And it was plenty, such that I could relax
into the days to come,
open armed and ready to receive.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 28, 2022
The father doesn’t give the son
a stone for bread, so why
all these stones, these chipped teeth?
Why this gnawing hunger?
The father doesn’t give the son a stone,
so why, father to son,
down all these generations –
all these walls, all this rubble?
Picking up the pieces, looking,
distractedly, for something
that would lock this life together,
a lodestone, a keystone,
an ancient way
The father loves the son,
but how is this made known?
How do the living rays of Truth
that shine through consciousness
reveal this longed-for bond?
They are the knowing.
Sit in the shade of this great Rock
and share the feast.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 6, 2021
When I saw you couldn’t
carry yourself, I thought I had to,
or then I thought you’d have to learn to
But today I saw
how you are upheld,
how you are cradled,
how you are given
arms that can hold the world up,
and you and I,
faithfully held,
can never let each other down.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 15, 2020
Take a periwinkle crayon,
follow it down the whorl of memory
to the shiver of feeling it evoked –
not the easy love of magenta and blue-green,
but a tremulous liking,
flavor and texture
with a sliver of tears, perhaps,
a taste to grow into
Remember magenta berries,
the juicy ones with the pithy crunch
and the flavor unlike most anything –
a little sweet, a little floral,
which we ate, not knowing their name
or if they were edible,
along the high hedged path to Whitney’s house
Consider sisterhood –
its bittersweet, its viney tendrils,
multicolored and intimate,
a tie to grow into.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 4, 2020
Sorrow has its season,
not as master, but as shadow,
a reminder of emptiness
and the song that fills it
Sorrow brings us
down through the wet passage
of echoes, dark shiny walls
and the sound of dripping
We will know how deep we are
as sorrow plumbs us.
We’ll come out richer
on the other side.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 30, 2019
We keep on circling home
like coins that spin and fall
and ring and ring
before they find their still point
We circle home
and our sudden sadnesses
bring us up short.
It may be a long fly
before we realize
we never left.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 22, 2019
Children emerge from the library
paired with parents
and two steps out the door
they invariably
break into running or dancing or singing,
bouncing against their parent’s staider gait
like leaves caught by the autumn breeze,
pent up from stillness
now released —
as rich a gift to me
as the tall oak trees,
resplendent red above,
speaking of community,
a place that cares for them.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 13, 2019