Tag Archives: family

Home Where You Are

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I want to go home, he says.
This is home, I say,
and then I pause, and ask,
what would make it feel like home
to you?

It takes a few times of asking,
then he says, it doesn’t matter —
anywhere there are two or more persons
to receive you.
Well, that’s all right, I say,
because we are here. There are three of us.
This is your home.

I feel a little uneasy,
because I have used a bit of force
in an issue of hygiene.
Perhaps it felt hostile.

I do my best, now,
to fill this living space
with the glow of home,
to be one who receives him
as well as one who puts him to bed.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 14, 2017

Forgive Me

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Forgive me, for I didn’t expect
the swift slap of anger that rose up
as if from within me, that blew
my behavior off course a couple of feet
before I crouched down and let it go,
so much useless, howling nothingness
that tried to make me think it was important,
that tried to make me feel justified

Forgive me, for I reacted,
in that moment, so full of myself
that I forgot to see you. Forgot
that seeing you is the one excellent thing
I can do for myself, what makes me
realize myself more fully. That is to say,
seeing you will lift me from myself
to my true being,
fulfilling the role that Life intends,
good for you and me.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 10, 2017

Release

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These are the orbits
in which we try
to find our life,
the circling in,
the haphazard intersection
of some memory or dream
with what we’ve called reality,
the moments of freedom
and the hours of keeping watch,
the forced leisure
and the long waiting

This is a time which may seem long
but we’ll find a perspective
in which it was short.
We’ll find a way to move,
we’ll find a peace.
We don’t need the last good bye
to find release.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 8, 2017

Fathered

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We had felt ourselves fatherless
for so long. Bereft of the security
of a wise hand, a holder of place
for us, a steady arm
guiding our wobbly efforts

We had been fatherless, and
so had our fathers, betrayed
when they reached out
for crucial aid

We carried ourselves thus,
tentative, cringing from expected blows,
trying to take up less space,
to go unnoticed
and so avoid expulsion

So astonishing to learn
Our Father has been with us all along
providing bright support around our heads,
plenty of ground to stand on,
plenty of headroom,
extending past to future
all along the presence of our days

As we walk, now royal,
in the exclamation
of our stature as beloved
sons and daughters of our Father,
welcomed home.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 29, 2016

Old Photos

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heather-and-eric-97-cropped

I sit here in this winter afternoon
with time laid down in multiple exposures,
coming round to end of year,
softly tugged by nineteen-year-old photos

With carols on the stereo to knit the years together
and drafts around the windows to remind me of the weather
and nothing, really, that I need to do in here and now
except my heart’s deep preparation for eternity

Those friends, who were such sweetness in our lives back then
are gone from us, except in memory,
those little faces, and the strength of love they pulled in us —
they are still dearly loved, though not the same

And we approach a Christmas where we won’t see them
and we’ll put no decorations in the house
as we look for something often sought but found seldom
to fortify ourselves for time to come —
the perfect peace to bring this world safely through its changes,
to play our part in witnessing the birth of truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 15, 2016

The Long Traverse

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magnuson-poplars

Regardless of our pushing,
we can’t go any faster
than the flow of things,
the time it takes the old man
to eat supper, the time
before he’s ready
to go to bed,
the time it takes for thoughts
to fully form,
the time it takes to leave

These are things that may be known
but not by us —
We are required to fill our days
with everything we can —
what we stand for, what we value,
what will move us forward
though we know not where

Surely at some time
we’ll crest the hill
and see the land before us.
We just can’t say when.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 1, 2016

Note to my email readers: I would dearly love to hear your responses, but I don’t receive them when you hit “reply” to my email. (notice how it says “donotreply” in the address. That means the emails don’t get to me). If you click on the blue title of my poem, it will take you to my website. At the end of the poem is a place for you to reply. I’d really love to hear from you.

The Beat

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bark-and-trees

Well, there are pockets of regret
in every cupboard, every drawer —
things that were neglected,
things that were forgotten,
things that could have been but never were

But there is a time for clearing,
and every un-cashed chance
can be redeemed.
Life, after all, doesn’t march
down a track of time,
leaving all that’s missed
hopelessly behind

The time of life
keeps on inviting us
to jump in, double dutch,
and if that seems too daunting,
it will give us another chance.
Life doesn’t let us forever miss the beat —
Life orchestrates us, and Life is complete.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 18, 2016

The Art of Home

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edward-builds-cabin

Rain outside,
Schubert within —
the old man taps his toes
as if in rapture
though I don’t know
what he really hears

We have a cozy place —
we’ve made it out of walls and paint
and music, heat, and light,
and presence and kindness

We are teaching ourselves
the art of home —
how to design the spaces,
how to build them,
how to provide
for all the flows we want to come through

We built this house
with hope and imagination.
Our young family emerged
and flowed through it,
filling some spaces, not using others
in the way we had imagined,
moving on, leaving behind
the cavities its movement carved,
the flotsam from its ebbing presence

We are teaching ourselves
what to take with us, what to let go,
how to make a house that fits how we live,
how to live so that our home
grows up around us in support.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 5, 2016

Morning Thoughts

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golden-garden-beach-trees

I want my legacy to be
of joy, of insuppressible
open inquiry, of kindness
and of comfort

I want my children to inherit
ways of being, not frayed and dusty
tokens of attempts to make meaning.
I want them to delight in their days
and their essential contribution

They don’t need
what these delusive times
would call wealth,
they need the richness
of water from rock, manna from sky
and the exhilaration of co-creating
all of life’s light.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 3, 2016

Our Bond

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edward-looking-at-tree

Sometimes when we get close
we scrape at the edges
of grief and longing, we
let out great sighs, which
have no words to fill them

Sometimes in grief and longing
we grow distant, wishing, perhaps,
to spare each other from the same thing.
Then as we come together,
we notice how deep,
how strong, complex and tender
is our bond,

How much we are committed
to throwing our weight
into the small boat of our hope
and rowing with all our strength
that we may steer it, finally,
to the long sought shore.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 2, 2016