Hope Sandwich (on desperation toast)

hope sandwich

The grid has shaped us broken —
We find our angled edges only fit
with others who are similarly maimed.
We cry out in our pain and our frustration
and find our cries just shape more of the same

We try to think of starting over,
Try to see a way
to pattern something new,
But all our edges dig into the injured soil,
compact it more, erode it, stir up dust

There is a river,
There is another way,
There still are headlands that are wild.
We need to find those headlands
in our minds —
That’s where we start,
That’s where we stay

It’s not so much a work of starting over
(These trees are here, they’ve grown for years)
So much as moving now
along our truer channels
thus reinforcing all the good that’s here

But now it’s time to cry —
Cry tears, cry out —
anything to be less stuck, less dry.
With all my voice that’s left, this shout
for help. I can’t do this alone.
. . . And so to wait, until direction comes.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 11, 2014

Lift Your Head

No guilt,
of being found
with the impress
of a wound, stamped
in the sad and haunting image
of a wound
that you always have detested,
that you scorned
as it, in turn, was spurned
by countless others
in your place
who wished
as deeply as do you
they could be free

No curse
upon the generations
no alarm
no stain upon your visage —
You are pure,
as pure as all the others
down the broad and brilliant
pathway of your line,
For when you lift your head
out of that dream,
you lift them all,
and when you’re lifted,
you all, together, shine.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 27, 2014