The torn edge of paper
takes to the fire first,
leaps up in transformation,
starts the heat
that lights the kindling
till the logs ignite
Being torn can have its function,
for the comfort is right there
ready to leap up
and warm the whole place.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 10, 2021
You wanted to stand up and speak,
you wanted your story
to be told,
you wanted them all to know
how much she meant to you
But all your words kept being swallowed
in second guessing and regret,
and by the knowledge that your anguish
wasn’t something you could convey, anyway,
wasn’t something that people
had the capacity to hear.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 14, 2021
Come in, sit down –
there’s a place here
even for your tears
We can give you the comfort of darkness
where you don’t have to
control your features,
we can give you a blanket
the color of light behind closed eyes –
it can wrap you soft,
it will make room for you
When you’re done
you can come out –
there’s a place for you here too,
to let the warmth and light
lift the corners of your mouth back up
Come in, all you who are alone –
you can comfort us,
we’ll comfort you –
we call you even as we are called
to the place outside of space
where there is always room.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 24, 2020
I start to feel the deep dark pools
whose surfaces may shift,
may show or hide
the fathoms underneath
The season’s lights reveal them –
they glint with their reflection,
they multiply the brightness,
illuminating memories
We’ll have no Christmas lights
this year, not even candles –
the lights that shine for me
will be the deep internal ones,
the ones made brighter
as they plumb the darkness,
the ones that walk with us
along our solitary path,
©Wendy Mulhern
December 11, 2020
I’m forced to remember
I can’t do this alone,
can’t toss my thoughts high enough
to scale the peak,
can’t get the answer
from random imprints of emotions
I’m forced to remember
answers have nothing for me –
I need the deep suffusing
of what knows me.
I need to give up my projections
and let myself be shown.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 25, 2020
Today I was waiting,
waiting to emerge,
feeling my light press dimly
through layers of perception,
not quite opaque,
feeling my light press urgent
like running out of breath under water
against a surface the color of ice
And I couldn’t imagine
or couldn’t remember
how I could ever break through,
but coming around
as if from the back,
I seem to have made it OK.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 17, 2020
I could feel the rush of tears
behind the smoke, behind the fog,
a smell of sea breeze
providing salt
I wanted them to wash
all the stories down like sand,
to cut through to the place
where pebbles gathered
I wanted us all to have the chance
to start over again,
to bring our regrets to where
we could safely lay them down,
and finally to look clear-eyed upon each other
without fear, without judgment, without masks.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 14, 2020
Crying is finally
a way to go home,
or the memory of it,
a way to gather enough waters
to lift you out of the dream,
wash you towards the place
where former memories
have no more weight,
where they just shine
like shafts of light dancing in the deep
They come around
to peer into the pool,
to see it fathomless,
to smile and laugh
at all the glints of it,
to see their grace
now made clear
while silent stones
sink gratefully down and down and down.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 6, 2020
Water over me, water under me,
water in me. This tremble of change,
of reset, of ripple,
of washing everything smooth,
hovers behind my eyes, my nose,
my mouth
There is peace here, and there is hope
in the quiet of crickets,
in the memory of water –
one day’s inundations,
another’s ablutions,
oblations I offer
and images I hopefully receive,
visions which I longingly believe.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 1, 2020
We get tumbled together again,
where the web of grief
catches us up in its snare –
not the whole of us, but certain aspects,
such that we move through the day in a fog,
trying to work as usual,
going so much slower
Things clear up a bit
at end of day –
we find some comfort
in our togetherness,
we find some peace within the progress
we tortuously trundled through to.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 31, 2020