Tag Archives: friendship

Possibilities

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I’ve been keeping a door open all day
Maybe some bugs have come in
But there’s a sweet breeze
and a gentle whistling of the air
and something that turns my feet
subtly sideways towards the opening
and sets my thought softly drifting
towards the outside
A place where currents blend
And fragrances combine
in ways that offer journeys for my mind
And bees do their persistent work
And birds and squirrels offer commentary

I’ve been keeping a door open
to draw me out
And to offer entrances
In the steady breathing
that’s called home.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 22, 2012


Ode to Improv

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In this playful place
We have permission
to ride on currents
that we surely feel
though they don’t map
on what we call reality:
A fabricated character
may still know joy, 
know grief, know glee
A made up situation
triggers genuine emotion
in a synchronistic serendipity

A lobster may engage in final banter
with one for whom she’ll be his evening meal
We’ll laugh because we recognize the truth in it
and how, for us, the lobster is so real
And we’ll love because the laughter binds us tighter
and shows us something deeper that we share
And this reality will make us richer
as we move in our quotidian terrain.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 26, 2012


Two for Foret

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(Our friend Foret passed on yesterday evening.  This evening I took a bike ride, thinking of him, and these are the images that came forth.)

Life Affirms Itself

Life affirms itself
in brilliant blue of sky
and clouds laid out
in languid abandon
of wisps and splotches
brightness of the late sun 
softening the evening

It is a time for wistful thoughts of angels
and imagining us all gathering
free, now, from all our limitations —
all the times we felt we couldn’t share —
When we can recognize each other by the essence
that before we only saw in flashes
but which, in each of us, now shines clear 

Life affirms itself
in this and every yearning
and in each instinctive turning
to our Love.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 10, 2012














For Foret: A Tribute

Rainier-sized force of gravity
on the dance floor
Packing massive passion
Centrifugal powerhouse
Roiling currents with your playful storms
Humble and hoping
Romantic troubadour
Proffering sweet flowers plucked from air
Barefoot on your minstrel cycle
Seeking out harmonics, blending song
Forging from outlandish parts and phrases
A role you owned, a place where you belonged
I offer you this evening sky, this mountain
And through awakened feet, this farewell kiss
My feet to earth, and earth to you, Foret,
May you walk on in peace, inhabit bliss.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 10, 2012



The ones I want

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These are people who I want to be with
How do I decide that?
What are the components
of the equation
that make me look upon our gathering
with eager openness, anticipation?

These are people I want to be with
Can I say it to myself about anyone?
Can I just choose to so regard them
and then feel that glow?
— I don’t know.

This is how I am drawn:
When I think of them, I light up inside
As I approach them, coming from a distance
New layers of aliveness
keep waking up
As I get closer
I start running

What qualifies them so?
I didn’t make a judgement
Didn’t pass them through a screen
Conducted no tests
I don’t know exactly why my heart
just said yes

These are people I want to be with
I didn’t engineer it so
It isn’t something I deduced from calculations
I just know.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 8, 2012



I’m in

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(Notes from the third seasonal five women gathering on Vashon)

We have inhabited
a place of waves
an ebb and flow of stories
diverse perspectives that we try to reconcile
the tossing circles constantly recurring
hope baubles bobbing on their glossy surface

They bob against the undertow of sadness
and the mind’s attempt
to close the loop, to claim
the promised satisfaction dearly longed for
We can choose to float there
or step free . . . 

. . . Winds wander
Waves slap along the shore
Clouds display themselves across the sky
I step now from the land of metaphor
into the day
where sun sweetens
and geese parade their young before our eyes
Warm sand and stones smell like seaweed
by my resting face
Bright cold water licks my resting feet

I lie here and consider
Where do I immerse myself?
How do I join in this grand wheeling of the sky?
How do I find grounding in this
aliveness so much greater than
my little “I”?

I’ll take all of it
Whatever is given
Whatever way I can be used
to heal the stories, serve the greater vision
I’m ready
I’ll take all immersions offered

I feel and smell the sun, the sand
the stones, the water
Then the waves come for me
and I’m in.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 3, 2012

Sun Catchers

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These moments catch joy

as bubbles catch air and light
In the confluence
of attention and intention
Of expectation and surprise
Of readiness to be delighted
and whatever light refractor
floats into our sphere of interaction:

A bright, chance meeting in a crowded festival,
A long-awaited reuniting of the clan,
A perfect day, and freedom to ride into it
open, ready to be wafted to adventure,
Or this: a tent of time —
Enough of it together
for each of us to open up a secret treasure
to relish as we share it with each other

These lights may now be kept
trapped in the amber of memory
Where they can serve as talisman
against the darkness of tomorrow’s doubts
Remind us, from our cloister,
How we can go out
like bubbles in the wind
and catch the light.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 27, 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



Infinite Comfort

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What rescues you
when you are smothered under
the sense of being thought of as a number? —
the numbing nothingness of being counted,
accounted for, 
packaged and dispatched, 
your measure taken,
assessed, dismissed
and so forsaken?

Any act of life can rescue you
and anyone or any living thing can do it
The scent of petals, kissed by warming wind
A smile unweighed, uncalculated, treasured
Or seeing someone needs you as a friend
A gift of time untallied and unmeasured
Whatever focuses on what is infinite
will make a place for you
and bring you into it.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 29, 2012


(background music: Isaac Shepard “A Fond Farewell”)

Touch Hunger

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Now that I know about my own touch hunger
I see touch hunger everywhere I look
Faces longing to be stroked
Bodies leaning out toward one another
The boy whose agitated energy
moved him in an oscillating “8”
Just like my daughter moved
when she was small and needed to be held

We live in an emaciated state
Not knowing what we crave, how to relate
Our bodies stick-like, prickly, stiff
from starving for our basic daily touch

Caged off by fears, by norms, by talk of sin
We need to open gates, and so begin
to feed each other’s hunger
so we can
fill up our souls, and so be whole again.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 16, 2012



Parallel Paths

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(to my friends)

What if we’re walking
on parallel paths of discovery?
Each in our different spheres
with our different lessons?
So when we hold them up 
for one another to see
The windows of insight 
line up miraculously

Then, though our walking 
may be overwhelmingly solo
with times where it feels
there is no one we ever could talk to
It might give us comfort 
amid our own darkness to know
We’ll have plenty in common 
when next we converge in our walking

Light matches light
Light in its buoyancy rises
Beacons from path to path
Giving us courage
Bringing fresh joy to our eyes.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 5, 2012