All of us are foolish,
and all of us are wise,
and most wise when we’re tender with each other,
and allow each other’s foolishness
to roll off like water,
evaporate and disperse
in the cooling awareness
of our sweet presence
and the warming radiance
of what loves us.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 21, 2023
More important than feeling better
would be the gift of knowing
you are fundamentally sound,
incapable of having something wrong with you,
approved of to your deepest core,
delighted in, to each extremity,
illumined such that no dark shadow –
disappointment, or even disenchantment –
could ever fall across you.
That, certainly, would be a reason
to rise, take up your bed, and walk.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 2, 2023
I get that stupid moments from my past –
ungainly words, unhealing silences,
don’t need to send a wound
down through my presence
We all deserve to be forgiven
for being out of touch, and for revealing it,
caught in the embarrassment
of our obtuseness,
tumbling suddenly
from what we thought was grace
While no resolve can guarantee
that I’ll do better,
this truth I have discovered:
my acuity can’t navigate
these fraught relations,
but Love, with ample grace,
smooths everything
And all of us are loved enough
that we can shine it to each other,
and innocently manifest the wisdom
that lets us share our love as we intend.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 25, 2023
Let me rejoice with you
in this simple act: laying down the stories
that held us apart – ancient slights,
perceived or imagined,
things we envied or resented,
things we couldn’t talk about,
and how that silence blocked
what had been doors
These things, so deeply buried
in the wash of time,
cannot find resolution
through exhumation
But they all can dissolve
in the frank glory
of what we’ve always been –
beings whose love can’t be closed down
since living love is how we are defined,
beings who must bring forth good
in everything we touch –
old stories gone, we touch each other still.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 23, 2023
Evening comes. Red disk
sinks behind an invisible hill,
showing its trees’ silhouettes.
Smoke sits between us and them,
flattening and fading the landscape
I seek refuge in humility,
so I can feel the lift
of the Mind that breathes all things,
the Life that lights awakening,
that leads to where we all forgive
and are forgiven,
and so relearn the way
to reestablish heaven.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 20, 2023
Beauty returns –
smoke dispersing overnight,
welcome coolness
blowing in from the north,
real clouds and real blue
supplanting yesterday’s haze
And I feel fine,
as if I’ve been forgiven,
as well may be,
as promised
in proportion to my love.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 18, 2023
I have been severe with myself
(though maybe not as much as I deserve)
I have needed this reckoning
to see the many ways I’ve come up short
But then I keep on finding this release
that cancels out the penalty
with a surfeit of fine grained joys,
appreciation at the smallest scale,
a permeating of respect
that grants to everything
its time and place,
and in this governance
there is forgiveness
for me and everyone who’s lost the way.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 21, 2022
It’s a year of long grass –
seed heads at face height sometimes,
clover our feet disappear in,
visually soft, full of many colors
within the green
It’s a year of eager growth
encouraged by forgiveness –
something within rising continually up,
touching the softness,
reaching into it
Everything has been washed clean.
We, too, can feel it,
we, too, discover flowers
that may not have bloomed
(at least not like this)
for many years.
We offer our fields as gift,
as mystery, as thanks.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 1, 2022
Let me lay down these strokes of absolution
like paint, colors sinking deep
into the paper, spreading out
at the edges of the lines,
color changing what you thought
had been the story, what you thought
was the starting point,
color saturating you until
you are wholly changed –
no untouched spaces,
every part rendered brilliant,
none neglected,
none shut out
And whatever amends are called for,
you are now well equipped
to make them, cozied up,
as you are, in the inclusion
of every last corner of you
in the color that’s given you,
the love that is yours.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 15 2022
Tonight we feel
we can settle down softly,
like snow, like radiant heat.
We can be soft with ourselves
for the work we haven’t done,
for the time we need
to gather resolution
for the final push
Tonight we feel
we have been filled with friendship,
and can use its model
to walk our way out
of the pit of isolation,
till what we see as distant stars
become our beacons
and our beacons
become our light.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 24, 2021