Tag Archives: freedom

Out of the prison

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If we allow one prison
We are all in its clutches:
The threads from that one knot
in the system
Spread into the fabric
of everything we do
We know
that if we fail to toe the line, we too can fall
into the place where even the least decisions
are denied us

So we deny
in little ways
our own decisions
We let fear
do the deciding for us
Let those subtle shackles
creep around our ankles
till we’re caught

If there is a freedom
A place as small as a walnut
we discover in our hearts
to hold our soul
In that contained infinity
It can fly
Can gather energy
Can be, without becoming
in a place with no confinement
where no prison can restrict it
And so we
Delivered from the tyranny of prisons
can be free.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 18, 2012


How to fly

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The steering of myself is subtle
and tricky, since these dials —
the ones that I was taught controlled 
my legs, my hands —
Turn out to have been only painted on
And the real controls
The ones that have the switch that lets me fly
Meticulously hidden for so long

I must remind myself each time
To leave the painted-on controls alone
To seek the hidden balance deep inside
And reconnect with what I’ve always known
To lean into the buoyant, flowing currents
Established when the world and I were formed
To catch the waves that carry me
along the perfect lines
where every move of grace has gone before.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 3, 2012


East Coast Countenance

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When you walk
I see how you are harnessed
by the shoulders, by the head

When you look out of those eyes
preset to see
only what is permitted,
furtively scanning for recognition
I feel the burden there

When you smile
Towers of blockage fall
The light of you streams forth
just in a quick flash
and I know
there is hope for us all.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 21, 2012



Reclamation

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After the voice of scorn was banished
Other voices began to rise
tentative at first,
but gaining strength from each other
The voice of wonder
The voice of “of course!
You have a right to joy;
Of course goodness is the organizing principle!”
The voice of liberation
The voice of exaltation
The voice of a continual elation
Realizing every silenced hope
could claim its place
and start to sing again.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 7, 2012



Homing

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The water is homing
Carving deltas in the sand
Delta for change
though this is timeless
Water homing
A grand joining
from every place where it had seeped
at high tide
Water flowing
in zigzag patterns of the moment
through the sand
Pooling in our footprints
Dissolving them, but halted
for a time
in the impressions

Water like multitudes, molecules
Each called alone
Moving together as one
Water like 
us claiming our freedom
through the simple act
of moving as we are called.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 4, 2012



We are called

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We are called to liberty
Called to serve that thing in us
that levitates
that lifts
that fills us with the power to leap
to fly

We are called to joy
and nothing else
has any voice nor sway
No tales of heavy burdens or their virtues
No tales of guilt or prices we must pay
No tales of lack of worth or ancient shame
Can stand the test of truth or win the day

We are wired for liberty
And only that
Can spark our motivation
Only the call of joy can make us rise
So proving it to be our true salvation.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 1, 2012


The necessity of trust

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Here is the openness of trust:
that, all permissions granted,
in freedom to do anything we want,
the things we choose
will trend toward what will bless

That in the field where nothing is forbidden —
No kind of movement,
words, thoughts or emotions —
Our own divinity will guide us with precision
to grace of body, mind and interaction

Here is the necessity of trust:
Each gift we have needs freedom to unfold
to stretch out perfectly
and fill its purpose
Not from a regiment imposed on it
But because, internally
it must.

©Wendy Mulhern


June 30, 2012

Release

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No one needs to be defined
by failings, or ancestral line,
habitual smallnesses passed down
through fathers’ tone-deaf, caustic snide remarks
or denigrating tone of voice
or wordless attributions 
that would put them in a box

Each one is free
Each father free to grow
beyond the frame his father put him in
Each son to rise to fill the call
of his internal plan
Each father can release his son
from every tiresome lie that held him down
Each son can find the truth
of his I Am.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 25, 2012



Being Free

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In this weightless place
Released from all the loops of thought —
of problems posited, solutions sought —
I offer presence

In this open space
where gentle currents 
run clear and smooth
with time for many folds and curls
I yield my preconceptions

In this present grace
where eyes connect
and we have locked attentive
in a mutual orbit —
In this sacredness we move
and so we learn

Thought stilled of looping is free
to follow grander leadings
ever receiving the impulse
to show forth the truth that we are.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 23, 2012


Remembering

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We walk almost in trance
Remembering
Doing things no one has taught us
Doing them because we must —
Some ancient edict
has brought us to this point
Insistent hunger drives us to the place
where we may find ourselves together
learning grace

Slowly, we pick up and wear the wisdom
Older than the schools
and the long, loud rush of words
and the frantic reasoning
intoned over and over
The words of those who would impose
a logic to their will
and make us think we need to do
the things that scatter, kill
us off, to cull the ones
who for a time can do the bidding 
of a voice that doesn’t care.

But we return
Some of us, at first
Then a few more
We come in ones and twos
But we are many
And listening within
Each of us knows 
this thing we need to do

So we unite
First join hands
Then learn to breathe together
Then learn to hold the space for one another,
To shine the light that magnifies each person’s gift
That brings us into peace and closes up the rift
Till we can weave our separate music into one voice
To reconstruct our primal song, and so rejoice.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 9, 2012


Picture: Jennifer McCurdy Vortex Vessel, Photo by Gary Mirando