Tag Archives: grief

Compassion

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Everybody’s life
is just … their life —
the places where they fell,
and where they failed,
the losses of their hopes,
the pooling grief

There’s no comparison of lives —
not one person’s with another’s,
not one person’s, with what it might have been,
no one gets to have
the biggest joy, the deepest grief,
a story more worth telling than another

No one is cursed,
each one is blessed,
and underneath all the questions
is that simple fact,
the place everyone’s life
is trying to get to,
where nothing that happened matters,
and everything that is, does.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 8, 2019

Allowed

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There is a place for tears,
there is a place
for turning around three times
and lying down,
there is a place for curling up
and waiting for the inner heave to stop

The comfort rises up around me
like soft flames from the coals,
cradles me, reminds me
this warmth is always at hand

Maybe we’re allowed
to have a soft day sometimes,
to go back to bed, for a while,
in the afternoon,
to do about as much work
as the sun did today,
showing up for about an hour
between fog and day’s end.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 6, 2019

Crickets Returning

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We looked up, delighted to hear
in small strains, the refrain
of crickets returning

Soft, intermittent, rising and falling,
not in the trees where we heard them
in previous years,
not as a constant, a chorus that stretched
through the days and the nights of the summer

But cricket song, still, here in the fields,
slowly increasing to fill up the late afternoon —
a light recompense
for things we have lost,
a reminder that everything changes,
and things that are missing
can also return
to be loved and rejoiced in once more.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 24, 2019

Hollow Spaces

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Is it OK to take a moment
before I step back
from the dry path of sadness,
to feel the desolation
before turning back to green?

It isn’t forbidden
but why I seem to want this
eludes me. this path was fruitless
even before the hope died,
it was a way I would have wasted
life energies and time

Well, being here, feel it —
feel the hollow wind
sucking at the dry rocks,
feel the hunger, feel the sorrow,
feel it for as long as you may need to

Then you can turn yourself,
and live.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 18, 2019

Under

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We started to feel underwater
though it was just under rain —
under rain, and under tears,
under memories, and under
the warp of time

We tried to speak
but our words were garbled,
bubbles rising up,
purpose having floated off
somewhere else

We couldn’t hold ourselves to anything,
couldn’t stay grounded,
couldn’t fly up to the surface for air

Our only hope
was to close our eyes for long enough
that when we opened them
the whole strange scene would be gone.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 11, 2019

Blessed are they that mourn …

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I will not let thee go, except thou bless me

Before they sing, the little birds
expand to almost twice their size,
taking the morning in,
filling themselves up
with what will be their song
so it expresses
all the joy and glory that they feel

You will be like that,
so deeply filled with what has saved you
that comfort will pour forth like birdsong,
blessing everyone who hears.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 22, 2019

Mourning Song

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I have a bag of tears
somewhere in my head,
I feel it jiggle with the bumps along the road,
maybe I’ll take it out
and drink some down,
water my memories

Oh my sweetest love,
I miss you in my future,
I miss your presence, too.
The water comes and takes away my footprints,
something like that sometime may take me, too

I found a feather
amidst my sobs along the sand,
so small and perfect —
I smoothed it with my hand,
and as I always do
I had to take it for a sign
I had to listen for your presence in my mind

“Didn’t I show you?” you said —
I answered, “yes, you did.”
“Then you will take to heart
that light-filled vision.
Your heaviness is like those clumps of snow
disappearing, dense because they’re melting.

“Take that feather
and learn to fly sometime,
get ready
to leave it all behind,
not that you’re going anywhere,
just being redefined —
that’s how I’ll see you on the other side.”

©Wendy Mulhern
February 21, 2019

Missing Someone

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Something leaps up quick
behind my eyes. It could be tears,
the slow sting of memories,
could be frustration,
but every time I head down that path,
it seems I end up
in the same place

I taste that missing someone
is bittersweet. The sweetness
is indeed a potent force,
the sorrow seeping slightly after,
not overwhelming the brightness
but softening it.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 17, 2019

Taming

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Even the greatest demons,
fearsome and raging
as they rip and howl
through the chasms
of your abandoned hopes

Even the slamming
trap door of shame
with its dark echo
of clanging isolation

Just like everything that drags along
the shadowed garb of sorrow.
these, too, will be disarmed and tamed

Their sad disguises
will be laid aside,
their secret heart
will be exposed
and they’ll be wrapped
with tender expert hands
so they have no more need
to haunt your home.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 22, 2018

Look Up

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Look up, little one —
there is a light to guide you
through the wistful night,
through the longing day

There is a place you are received
and not just at the end
of a long and lonely span

Your reception is right here, right now,
in the ever-present truth about your being
(a truth that never leaves you,
being immanently what you are)

It touches in
to the infinity that fuels your presence,
releases grace into your day,
robes you in its royal essence,
lights up everything
along your way.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 14, 2018