A place that’s warm can give me
permission to cry — kindness so often
sets me off, I don’t know why —
I don’t know if it rolls me onto
the underside of long and steady courage,
if it makes my vigil seem bleak, if it allows
a setting down of strength,
and if this flood is something
I just needed, or if it is
a detour from the program
and does no earthly good
I don’t know why, but I feel
grateful and unhinged
both at the same time.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 4, 2018
We go through the times
of these deep colors,
we are soaked through
in these dark tones,
we see the sediment suspended
in slow-moving oceans,
we feel the sifting settling
and its countering stir
There are no lines
to trace around these motions,
there is no story
that we can tell,
there is no waiting
that gains us information —
we find our meaning
in moving ever forward,
chiming our presence
into the days.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 25, 2017
My facile answers have turned sour,
my tissue-paper wings
discolored and then melted in the rain,
sad framework of support now holding nothing
I should recognize this path by now —
enough times I’ve skipped blithely down it
pretending not to see the looming overcast
or how bravado sidled in
to prop up failing confidence,
coming to this place —
cold lumps of despair,
nowhere to fall to
Slim threads of light return
as I remember
this is no task for me
to shoulder on my own
Given a moment of stillness,
grace returns,
an element I never could concoct,
a lifeline I can hold to.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 4, 2017
We might have wished our children
no pain, but each emotion is a gift
and the fact that they can feel
is testament to who they are
If they can cry
the garden of their life will bloom,
they will have
bright shining after rain,
they will have
deep canyons where their love
carved out spaces
for winds of compassion
to sing through
They will have birds nesting
and creeks running,
frogs and fish and mayflies —
they will have true life,
they will know joy.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 26, 2017
In this place of everybody’s tears,
it feels amiss to have opinions —
better to let the collective pool deepen,
better to hear the cleansing music
of the quiet drops
and let the gathered ocean
sigh and shift, pour in, recede,
find its common rhythm,
sweep us up within its cycling waves,
rock us, rock us, till our sobs subside
till our restive motion
finds its restful ease.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 18, 2017
As if randomly,
through some searing memories
I find myself
fallen between the ribs of normalcy,
lodged in the space between
what I thought and what I’ve come to understand
stuck in a place where I can only cry
“save, or I perish”
Part of me thinking,
are tears so bad, anyway?
Is this agony, or is it just
the stretching of my face
and of the inside of my mouth?
What carried me this far
will carry me all the way.
To the almighty, it doesn’t matter
if my salvation took a thousand years
or one day,
I am not tardy,
I am not far from home —
wait for the clearing,
for surely it will come.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 26, 2017
Sometimes when we get close
we scrape at the edges
of grief and longing, we
let out great sighs, which
have no words to fill them
Sometimes in grief and longing
we grow distant, wishing, perhaps,
to spare each other from the same thing.
Then as we come together,
we notice how deep,
how strong, complex and tender
is our bond,
How much we are committed
to throwing our weight
into the small boat of our hope
and rowing with all our strength
that we may steer it, finally,
to the long sought shore.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 2, 2016
You can’t even begin
to sort through the layers
of hurt, mistakes,
attempts at compensation,
of slights and their reactions,
things taken and the gaping holes they leave
But maybe you can put in a little seed
and let the rain seep down
and let mycelium colonize,
and perhaps a little plant
will grow up through it all,
strong and clean and straight
and none of the past will matter
as life asserts itself once again,
perfect as ever,
conquering all.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 27, 2016
We all get pushed, sometime,
through the mill of grief.
See how it changes us.
See how all the things we thought
were so important
are just nothing. All the contests
to be the most whatever —
successful, or attractive,
cool, or buff, or blessed —
are rendered pointless
In grief we have fallen
right off the escalator.
We find ourselves here at the bottom
while the parade rolls on above,
and when we see each other here
there’s nothing left to do but love.
And after that, there’s no returning.
From now on, we’ll see each other different,
the unmistakeable mark of tears
brightening each other’s eyes.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 7, 2016
In your grief and sorrow
you will be alone,
the touch of others
felt through a caul
When you meet your maker
you will be alone —
the magnitude of that encounter
eclipsing other presence
How you choose your death
is not a thing you’d tell anyone,
even if you knew to do so.
In that narrow passage
you will be alone
In the breaking to awakening
you are not alone,
tumbles of bright choruses
fill you from within
and the reverberation of you
sings its essential harmony
in the reunion of everyone
On the other side
we are not alone anymore.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 11, 2016