We Call it Home

We call it home —
many other beings
call it home, too —
we find our place,
we make our peace,
we settle in
and start to know our neighbors

We make it home —
many other beings
make it home, too —
we make our place,
we find our peace,
we all are here
in concert with each other

We find it fine —
many other beings
find it fine, too —
we make our place,
we call our peace,
here in the verb
of work and living
the beaded strand of jeweled days.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 7, 2019

photo by Audrey Ruhland

Strategies

I consider that each of us
knows what to do,
needs but the silence
of not being told,
needs but the trust
that when given the agency
we will acquit ourselves well

I think of the impulse
of tit for tat,
how it seems so hard
to remember
that only in choosing
to not bat back
have we any real chance
for release

And so I invite us to pause,
just let go of the need to do anything,
and welcome the touch of the centering stillness
that brings us together again.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 11, 2019

Harbor Song

Mystic harbor, grey on grey,
the breath of peace descending,
rainfall, nightfall, come what may,
the buoy clangs unending —
this, too, could be your song

Beyond the thought of what to say
or how the mood is trending,
the quietude can find its way
to meet your heart ascending —
you, too, belong.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 30, 2019

Harmonic

The sand won’t fail to ripple
in the pattern of the light,
in the pattern of the waves,
in the pattern of the wind and tides

The harmony of light and shadow,
ebb and flow, advance, receding,
holds each grain of sand
here where your toes, delighted,
find them

So it is with what we call our lives —
nothing puts it into place,
nothing holds it there
except the truth that permeates our days,
harmonic waves of blessed, light-touched life.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 30, 2018

Life Flow

In all the things we think we know,
so many things we don’t —
a city in a frond of fern, a universe,
the vast unfolding vibrance
in the corridors between the cells,
all the exuberance that life can send
coursing through those unseen channels

In these two turkey hens
ambling among the ferns,
nonchalantly snapping up the bugs,
chirping conversationally as they step —
perhaps two nebulae
grandly moving through the depths of space

They all — we all — are orchestrated
in the unceasing law of Life’s eternal joy,
our movement so much deeper than will or whim,
held by its breathing through us all.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 16, 2018

Gabriel

I saw the angel Gabriel today,
bright like fountain water,
clear as the quench of thirst,
soft as redemption

I remembered
(for Gabriel has come to me before)
how sure it is that afterwards
the promise of the moment
exquisitely unfolds

So, too, this time, in my sweet family,
let it be so —
let that pure presence
permeate us wholly,
let us be filled
and let us be delivered
to our promised native harmony.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 11, 2017

Harmony

Harmony lives in my house —
This I insist on,
even and especially in
the multicolored movements of thought.

I witness them converging in
towards a small collapse, a place
where disappointment could form
and sadness, where the colors
would dissolve into mud, and
other structures would raise
their mud-encrusted forms
to impose some ugly order —
resentment and its minions

But I will not have it.
Harmony lives in my house,
and the net of generosity
and sweet caring
keeps the channels open.
We all will get what we need.
We don’t need to demand it
from each other. We all
are harmonized in the One Mind,
who gives us our full fulfillment
and our radiant peace.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 14, 2017

Harmony

harmony

One day they discovered
there was much more to sound
than the tinny pings they evoked
by hitting themselves and each other

They found they could stand open
and the grand wind would come in,
would focus their tones
like fine bells,
would ring them crystalline and haunting
in a reverberation
that caught them up in holy awe,
and they all stood still
and listened.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 19, 2015

photo by Edward Mulhern

Channels

MacKenzie golden afternoon

We are so at home together here
in the realm beyond the worries and the posturing,
beyond the trotting out of
constructs of ourselves
comprised of fear, resentment, and bravado,

We are home together here
where your sweet, responsive
flowing essence
runs so close against me,
merges in the harmony
of what we are
and what we now discover
in the streaming of our being
down the deep swift channels
of our common soul.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 5, 2014