Tag Archives: freedom

Just Saying

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I’m not saying anything
about the quality of the box.
It’s a lovely box, and I can see
how it has given sense to your life,
a frame from which to view,
with which to order
all the currents streaming through your mind

I’m not saying anything
about the quality of the cage.
Certainly it’s a fine cage,
gilded and artful. It sets off your plumage,
provides a visual counterpoint
to your graceful lines

I’m just saying
something inside is making me
want to walk away. I don’t want
to try those containers out,
at least not now.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 29, 2018

Acquitted

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So what’s real about this
(where are all your accusers?)
is the innocence
that has always clothed you
and that innocence
makes you innocent
even as the snapping jaws of guilt
try to close about you

They’re just made of dust
so they can’t do anything —
can’t stop you from being
your noble self,
cant stop you
from being free.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 28, 2018

Confluence

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Freedom and oneness:
the only way to really
have both of them
is if you have an absolute
confluence of desires,
if in the song of what you want,
all the chords blend in their perfection,
producing new, delicious, haunting tones,
if all the rhythms
set each other off
in joyful syncopation
and all the melodies
chase each other down in bliss,
leaping and rolling,
surging and soaring

And this is how it is
for all of us
in the secret chamber
of what we want.
This, in its various ways
sparks all our quests
and so we can conclude
that it is here.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 7, 2017

photo by Edward Mulhern

Summer

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Summer is kind,
pockets of peace offered
in wind, in the play of light in leaves,
in shade. There is a lightness
that lifts thought like a kite,
dances it against the high currents,
brings new sight

Summer is replete
with memories of freedom
playing like breeze across the mind,
still impelling the thoughtful to dream
of liberty for all mankind.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 20, 2017

Come Out

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Come out into the green —
there is life here, in the leaves
and under them,
there is fresh air,
there are myriad surprises

Come where you are free
of all the tyrant screens
that seek to program us,
to sell and drive us

There’s something unsurpassed
in knowing without media,
communing — just you —
with other life forms

If it is left unphotoed, unrecorded,
it will keep on touching you —
the haunting song of your connection
reaching deep — deeper than anything
anyone ever told you.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 31, 2017

Structure

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When the rigid walls have been abandoned,
we flounder a little,
seeking our structure

We will find it
in the logic of our movement,
in the tug of our connections
as we spin

We’ll build its lattices
with every act of kindness
and the sinew of attention
and the ebb and flow
of where we need to be

We will stay free
of rules that are external to our living,
we will grow strong
through listening and giving.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 6, 2017

The World Today

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Can’t get too excited
about the choice between
the fox and the raccoon
to guard the henhouse

And though we well may be distraught
before the litany of fallen freedoms,
truth be told,
we’ve been chained
for as long as we remember

The shackles of any lie
will hold us prisoner.
Most effective are the ones
we never see

The amazing thing
is what unclasps them all —
miraculous, it seems,
when we consider
number and duration

But it’s not a secret,
it’s what we all have heard,
for surely it’s the truth
that makes us free.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 4, 2017

Note to Self

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So listen. If you’re going to be
a smart fish, know that,
if you take the bait, you don’t get credit
for all the times you passed it by.

The fisherman only gets wilier,
the lie never gets more true,
and if you want to stay free,
well, it’s up to you.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 2, 2017

Note to my email subscribers: There was a typo in yesterday’s poem. I’ve fixed it on my blogs, but once the email goes out, I have no way to get to the email texts. To see the poems on the blogs, just click on the title at the top, or on the comment button at the bottom. Thanks!

Walking Free

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There isn’t anything you need to do first.
You don’t have to pay a debt,
explain a misstep,
get somebody else to say they’re sorry

You don’t have to go down corridors
of what happened
or why you or someone else
made certain choices,
or what might have happened,
had you chosen different

And you don’t need to fix
a broken system, don’t need to
proclaim its flaws till someone maybe hears,
don’t need to suffer
to prove how wrong it is

The light of you doesn’t require
any of those fuels, nor can any of those things
obscure or snuff it.
You can walk free
in your divinity, your wholeness —
Look up, set your feet, and go.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 28, 2017