And maybe there are times
when there isn’t anything
to be said,
but it’s important to be there,
to share a silence,
to share the weight of presence,
to sit with someone
as they descend through a process
you may or may not understand
And sometimes you might detect
that you have walked a parallel path,
and there might still be
nothing to say about it.
You, too, might benefit
from the ballast of silence.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 20, 2016
This is not my battle,
this is not my battle,
I can let it go
This is not something
I can lose, not by wrong moves,
not by neglect,
this is not something that would benefit
from the weight of my anxiety.
I will not throw my weight around,
even in the privacy
of my own mind
This is something
that is well handled
by something much greater
than my small repertoire
of strategies
This is not my battle.
This is a time for me
to watch and learn.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 29, 2016
The wind chimes sang to me
through the night
and into the morning —
they sweetened my dreams
and my prospects.
They were untiring
in their celebration of
the wind that came
up ocean, through trees,
across the craggy rocks of mountains,
bringing the fragrance of
the powerful rightness of everything,
that which returns each day, as if
all our pathetic twistedness
had not touched it at all
And indeed
the freshness that escapes
in these rifts of wind
is proof.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 10, 2016
In our lives,
only good is given —
The darkest shadow
is still just a shadow,
cast by something
so magnificent
we don’t know how to see it
Dark times are here to show
how deep the love
that reaches down to gather us.
We won’t remember them
as anything but light —
jewels of our journey,
guiding our paths.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 3, 2016
Vessel by Jennifer McCurdy, photos by Julius Friedman
Still looking for the state of mind
where stones will float —
where the amazing heaviness —
the weight of a soul,
the depth of my caring —
will rise up
in the equipollence
of its brilliance,
lighting up itself
and all it shines on,
resting in the presence
of what it is
and the enduring gravity
of its essence.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 2, 2016
(or how to heal the world)
There is no grid of time or space
through which we move,
tracked along the x axis
through the highs and lows
of daily random y’s
These lines bend at our will,
we hold them, gathered,
in our hands,
we roll them out
through all the planes of consciousness —
they move at our command
We are not in the world, rather,
the world is in us,
so in the steadying of ourselves,
we steady it —
we calm it, reassure it, and set it
gently on its course.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 20, 2016
The day lightens,
not through any effort on my part.
The sun warms, the load lifts,
the promises assert their buoyancy,
rising like swift bubbles
through my heaviness,
leavening. Filling out
the wispy dreams,
making them solid,
giving them color.
It suffuses me
like blush,
with strength, with hope.
My feet reach down
and settle in
and find their ground.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 6, 2016
There is a love deep enough
to reach your very lowest point,
to wrap you up and hold you
tender, safe
There is a love that answers
generations of woe,
long legacies of dashed hopes,
intransigent injustice
There is a love for which
the wildest writhings
of your struggling heart
are no problem
You don’t have to be
small and polite
to qualify for Love’s covering —
don’t have to assume
you only get a small blanket
There is a love that can heal
all of your memories,
all of your doubts
all of your fears for the future
Here is love for you:
whatever you need,
you are covered.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 26, 2015
We will not save each other
but we will be saved.
When our tallies fail,
when our expectations fall,
and we’ve both put up our barriers
and each need to be saved first,
we can not save each other
But the fact that we reached out our hands
invokes the ever present aid,
the way we once saw light within each other
has earned our eyes the power to see the light
The light will save us
as it always has,
for it has never left us from its sight.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 3, 2015
In the early morning edges
where sleep tosses its transparent images
in fractal ragged waves
across awakeness
In the pre-dawn chill
where an electric light
fails to bring the vigor of the day
There is still radiance,
jewels of peaceful thought
spreading clarity,
rays of awareness
imparting buoyant hope:
this is a day of healing.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 18, 2015