The day has stretched out long,
we have worked, we have prayed,
we have been busy, and also listless.
The sun is still splendid,
low through backyard trees
as the clock rolls past seven.
We will eat, we will cry,
we will clean up. A day
between the days,
a day with no name.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 11, 2018
The heaping apple cart
tips over, the rolling hopes and expectations
jostle and fall,
bounce along roads,
lost to us now
We can’t even begin
to gather them back,
and the cart is broken anyway,
one wheel following the apples down
careening and ringing like a coin
And it makes no sense to us
to go back, to start over —
What would it be to us, at this point?
So in the aftermath
we wait to be lifted,
our lives to be borne
along a different arc.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2018
Alone, I find myself drifting
in some odd space between hunger and tears.
The day is benign, and everything is breathing —
Clearly, it all knows that breath is gratitude,
and that it’s enough to fully engage with it,
taking in and releasing
in the dance of mutual blessing
It almost seems I could join with it.
It almost seems like something I could never leave,
something I have never left.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 7, 2018
Every place we go back to, it seems,
presents another flood,
and surely it will cleanse us
and maybe it will drown us —
we can’t know until we go there
and go through —
there is no other way out
So we will hold each other’s hands,
we’ll go together,
we’ll be grateful for each sandbag
that kind people have thrown out
to shore us up, to lend support,
whether or not they feel they understand
We will go through —
who knows what
will be on the other side —
where we are now is all that we can know.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 3, 2018
What will you do with this?
Mothers — take it, use it to love your children
even more than you have before,
Fathers, use it as a way
to deepen grace, to find your footing
in the place where your nobility
touches ground
Brothers, sisters, friends —
use this to remember
how tender and how tensile
is your connection to each other,
how paramount it is
to keep these ties
awake in your heart
All of you — take this bright gift,
this strong release of light,
this nourishment of life —
use it to celebrate
our common source
and the fountain of our days.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 2, 2018
Family folds us in
in ways we didn’t know we could expect,
nets of connection bear us up,
many arms embrace us
So the mending begins,
of holes we mostly can’t even see,
things that must be obvious to others —
places we are leaking,
Why we seem to need to keep sleeping,
simple tasks that seem impossible —
At some time we will have to rise up
and reassume our former mantles.
But for now we’ll let ourselves be held
circled up in other people’s care.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 29, 2018
I’ll take what is given,
this storm, with roaring winds
and rain that slaps itself through screens
and runs down panes,
this sleep,
these people whose threads
are so deeply interwoven with my fabric
that we feel each other’s tug,
each other’s strength,
this truth, which settles out
(today, in luminescent teal)
so clear, so unassailable,
awaiting, but not demanding
my surrender, my return
to where I was before the world began.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 27, 2018
We will sit
in the comfort of each other,
we will talk
of things we know,
we will find solace
in the solidness of bodies,
in the quiet light
of shared confidences
There is a way forward —
it may come in settling back,
back into what feeds our life flow,
the shared aquifer of truth.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 26, 2018
Behind me, to my left,
soft touch on my shoulder,
what I also see on sunlit trees —
pale golden yellow,
warm and sweet and gentle
Upward, to my right,
pearly opalescence,
tones of mauve and powder blue,
pure love, unflinching truth
Beneath me,
silver-dusted midnight blue
opening before my feet,
lit from some unseen source,
star path to infinity
These colors let me know you’re here,
waiting, with a patient smile
till I finish this bout of crying,
ready to comfort me when I look up.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 25, 2018
wind driven rain
whips at the house,
rain falls through me
in waves, in recurring torrents
I’m like a spring tree,
my buds paused, my limbs wet,
water following its path
along my roots
I am not melting
though it may feel like it,
the soil will receive all of this —
my leaves will use it
to open out and grow.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 17, 2018