At the time of healing
grief leaks out the corners,
spills down, becomes a river
like to wash you right away
Let it go, let it go –
this is something more ancient
than all of your lifetime,
more elemental
than every regret you have borne
Let it go – it wants to flow away,
wants to be a cleansing,
wants you to know
that you have never been a tool of sorrow –
all those stories
are washed clean with forgiveness
and you are free.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 30, 2020
This is not about something having been wrong.
That topic would have me groping along the bars
assessing their materials and strength,
considering if they have a weak point
This is about the rightness
that has always been here, this is about
the light that can neither be obscured
nor confined. This is about
you here now. As you have always been
Lit up by grace, sliding through the illusions
untouched by them, free as a sunbeam,
establishing your own rhythm,
unfurling your own bright blooms.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 13, 2020
I’m striving now to learn to use the voice
that says, you don’t need anything –
don’t need to change,
don’t need to have been born
with a different set of genes,
or different circumstances,
you don’t need to earn anything,
you don’t need to be punished.
What you are is just exactly
what you need to be –
I’m striving to find the voice
that knows this clear enough
that when I tell someone this truth
they will believe.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 23, 2020
You stumble up through the regret
of what you thought, of what you said,
not helped at all by reasons
you were maybe right in what you did
The pain seeps through,
and not just from this one,
but many instances, from near to distant past,
where you had this same wound,
where you are porous
And you need some sweet submergence
where every hole is filled
with some kind of healing substance
so you feel re-strengthened, solid
And can stand, feel your integrity contiguous
to toes, to core,
so you feel sure
that what you see and say and do is sound,
and can soar while still connected to your ground.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 27, 2020
Grief is a place to put stories to bed.
The slosh of waves of narrative,
conflicting stories, counter stories,
fall to stillness here. There is no answer,
no explaining away,
no alternative fact
that could gain traction here.
There is nothing to say.
Which is why, in grief,
there’s room for healing.
There’s room for the internal rages
to burn each other out.
After all that, grief resolves
to stillness.
And after a long silence,
a new thought.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 4, 2020
Left once again
in the detritus of dysphoria,
ripped, deflated,
rendered helpless by its flat words
(give up, you can’t do it
and you don’t want to anyway
(take that palliative, don’t complain)
you don’t have whatever it may take
and don’t deserve to either)
You are not alone,
and though you feel
no one could approach you,
look again
As you let the stillness sweep you
as the ebbing wave subsides,
you will sense, inside, a tiny seed,
its threadlike roots extending,
pulling you together
till the sprout can lift its head
It will tell you
nothing overcomes you —
you will blossom, and your voice will soar,
you’re made of life —
that old voice isn’t —
it falls to dust, but you,
you still shine clear.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 7, 2020
This fierceness is needed,
for to allow the stain
to fall on anyone,
to let it shame them,
to let it shape them,
is an injustice
that can’t be allowed
This tenderness is needed,
for the washing clean
must deftly leave
all natural color intact —
all of it needed
to form the spectrum
expressing the wholeness of life.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 5, 2020
I lay the broken pieces on the altar
that they might be knit together by light,
that it might bathe them and envelope them
and be all the space between them
till no space is left unfilled
and they will be full,
and their former gaps will now be
the most precious of their substance,
and their former shards
will be cherished reminders
of what I hoped for long ago,
and that, in the light,
nothing is lost.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 23, 2019
There is a place for tears,
there is a place
for turning around three times
and lying down,
there is a place for curling up
and waiting for the inner heave to stop
The comfort rises up around me
like soft flames from the coals,
cradles me, reminds me
this warmth is always at hand
Maybe we’re allowed
to have a soft day sometimes,
to go back to bed, for a while,
in the afternoon,
to do about as much work
as the sun did today,
showing up for about an hour
between fog and day’s end.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 6, 2019
When I turned around to look at it,
I saw that I could not have seen
what I did not believe —
much as I wanted to believe it,
I really didn’t,
or I would not have missed it
It brings to question
what I believe now,
and if I now believe,
what that enables me to see
I see this day,
I see the peace in it —
what I may see tomorrow
is not for me to say
It will unfold
along the lines of my attention —
as I hold my source and center clear,
I’ll know.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 14, 2019