Tag Archives: healing

Alone, and Not

Posted on by
Reply

duck in sun

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

How We Heal

Posted on by
Reply

Shoreline trees

Some kinds of mending
take place slowly, small pieces
lost for generations
fitting softly into place,
a silent shifting as the frame solidifies,
a quiet sparkling where
one plane of integrity
has been restored

Some healing happens indirectly,
the steady love unfailingly applied
serving to melt a hardness
hidden in some distant corner,
unknown until the wave of freedom
washes through and something moves
that before was frozen

Some healing appears suddenly
when all the inner matrices
have finally aligned
and the light floods
through the whole being,
through the whole history,
across the whole landscape,
across all time.

 

Innocence

Posted on by
Reply

dawn at dock

True innocence
has no ignorance —
I learn this as I ride
the storm washed day,
I feel it as I pick my way
through my internal disarray
and feel the rays of light
infusing gradual understanding

This innocence
has not been torched by tragedy
and has not been imprisoned
in walls of fear,
this innocence steps clear
of all the crashing disillusionment,
of all the terror,
irrepressible assertion
that we are good to the core,
that we can steer by this
because we always are.

Therefore I saw your face as though it were the face of God,
and you were pleased with me.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 29, 2016

Habit

Posted on by
Reply

Magnuson shore

You don’t need to swallow
the bitter drink of disappointment
even though it’s a habit

You don’t need to close your eyes and nod
while the gall spreads down your throat
and pools of it settle behind your eyes,
and your teeth grind together
in the misery of another brick in your wall
of small

You can set that cup down,
you can bow your head,
you can wait to be filled
the way water fills footprints
in shiny sand

You can insist
on drawing no conclusions
until joy rises up
to smooth your brow.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 15, 2016

Clean

Posted on by
Reply

coming home

This is for you, for that time when
the mud seemed to
keep spreading all over you
the more you tried to get it off
(a hand unwittingly bestowing smudges
on your face, your hair, too, now enmired)

When all those hapless efforts to get clean
evidently just made you worse
(the weary resolutions you adopted, to get out
just sank you deeper)

And the rough voice said,
There is guilt, obviously —
there must be payment,
your redemption will, no doubt,
take a long time
(if, indeed, beneath the mud,
there’s anything left to redeem)

You cried, save, or I perish.
You washed yourself in tears,
you huddled, waited

And that, as always,
is when the lifting waters come,
bearing you up, separating
each strand of hair, floating
the dirt away, wrapping you
in weightless warmth

And tender hands
cradle you, bring you home,
saying, this is my precious child!
and everyone rejoices.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 30, 2016

Still Small Voice

Posted on by
Reply

morning with old fence

I lay down to sweet sleep.
It surprised me, arrayed, as I was,
against the fierce and ragged monsters
of the night, prepared, as I wasn’t,
(despite my frenzied efforts)
to battle them to the death

I had resigned myself
to creeping failure,
to the dark and desolation
of the coldest hour.
Instead, I woke to morning peacefulness,
the early waking of birds
and the first, pre-color, entrance of the light

Still small voice, so clear, so clarifying,
saved me when I couldn’t save myself —
Bright light to everything,
even departing monsters,
showed me who and where and why I am,
And the sweet direction —
what I’d madly thrashed at in my waking hours —
remains, a shining beacon for my days.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 27, 2016

I Need Some Help

Posted on by
Reply

grasses with vetch

Quick as the asking, help comes —
It comes in myriad little ways
like each plant’s response to spring,
to summer, tendrils and leaves reaching out,
such a multiplicity of enlargement
that my field is overcome with green

So many individual gleams
from one sun. Look up, they say,
that is not you, the one that sits in misery.
You are up here, in elemental joy,
pure purpose, and the naturalness
of things being what they are,
perfect in that incomparable
(and uncompared) unfoldment.

Look up. She is not here. She is risen.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 24, 2016

Standing Guard

Posted on by
Reply

storm and sun

What curls into my thought is mine.
It may call itself an imposition,
an annoyance I can’t help but feel,
(given someone else’s words or actions)
a rage, a grief, a clamping up,
a leak that stains and undermines my walls

But everything within my thought is mine
and I can grasp it,
trace it back along the lines of need,
find what’s calling out
and meet it with compassion,
let my love rise up as answer

What comes into my thought is mine —
if I can feel it,
it means that I can also find the truth to heal it.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 15, 2016

Testimony

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_0575

It didn’t matter how huge
the machinations were, how
overwhelming the structure,
how intricately wrought
the arguments, that testified
to your defeat. It didn’t matter
that they were years in the making,
didn’t matter how many putative forces
had been involved, how many actors
had had their hands in it.

We were told, in no uncertain terms,
that their evidence was ironclad,
that nothing could assail the verdict.

However.

Tide rises inexorably, with power
no sand can ever challenge.
Each meticulously placed grain
is simply lifted in the surf,
suspended in its own singular encounter
with the truth, set down on its own.
No structure is even remembered,
and your innocence, your wholeness,
gleams smooth and clear upon the shore.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 6, 2016

vessels by Jennifer McCurdy, photo by Josh Liebowitz

In the End

Posted on by
Reply

 

morning in lower pasture

No part of you
is beyond saving,
no cords of your life
so unravelled
that they can’t be rejoined,
there are no stray hopes
so lost they can’t be found,
there is no place beyond redemption

Every part of you
must fill the purpose
for which it is designed,
every promise is a hint of destiny.
In the end, nothing is betrayed,
we all come home
to claim our sovereignty.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 4, 2016