Nothing that you have to earn,
this sense of home
courses like a stream that you are one with –
you feel the water
and you are the water,
and every bright imagining,
each leap you take,
your precious contribution
to the river’s song,
what hums in you
and what you sing out,
continues ever timeless,
ever new.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 3, 2023
The wind at the tail of the storm
catches me up in excitement,
quick steps of the onset of fall
bring memories rich with delight
Someone, perhaps, has arrived here
in the sweet mix of coming home,
and coming to a favorite place
outside of their daily routine
I am a visitor, outside of time,
I walk here and freely imagine
that, much like the scent of fall leaves on the wind,
I can take in how they might feel.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 26, 2023
I travel from home
through home,
to home –
all of these places
affirm me
All of these moments join
in the vast collaboration of moments,
like water flowing uphill,
bounding in the joy of it
All of these people,
threads of their path lines
intersecting briefly,
dance out the fountain
of their internal impetus
All of them run on infinity,
all of them fueled
by the hum of connection. All of us prove
with the grace we’ve forgotten to notice,
how we are powered,
how we are home in the whole.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 15, 2023
Summer yields abundance –
the daily vegetables,
the daily herbs,
the daily use of them
The wide swing of the day before me,
the wind that bends these trees,
day after day,
and cools the house
The slow build now
of what will yield later –
in shade, in fruit,
in magnanimity
All these things breathe
as one, they join hands
in their common purpose,
they knit together to show us all
how we can do it,
how we are one.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 28, 2023
I, too, can be a holder of home,
the place where you feel comfortable,
where it is understood
that what you say will be received,
who you are will be accepted
Let me hold home for all of us,
where none of us need clutch a shelter
around our heads, where the broad roof
covers us amply,
and wind can blow through
if we want it to, bringing scents
from woods and field
None of us need to invent ourselves
and maybe get it wrong – at home,
everyone’s being flows from the source -generative harmony
creating us endlessly,
leaving no place for a rift,
making our presence a gift.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 14, 2023
Days start a little later here
but stretch out even longer –
plenty of time to grow, and keep growing,
from small seedlings into big plants,
swaying strongly in the strong wind,
taking what is given by the strong sun
I feel bee-like in my steady buzz
from task to task, taking strength
from every specimen of sturdy growth,
surprised to feel a slowdown in the evening –
I had felt I could go on forever
In the process, I am learning home,
sharing of place, rhythm of days,
essence of Spirit that holds us
in our harmonious ways.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 15, 2023
We stretch out nodding off
before the fire’s dry lullaby,
our toes up close
The cold wind that blew all day
keeps trying to snatch the heat
from the house
And the smiling setting crescent moon
casts its pale light
through the window
We have ways to keep warm
and ways to keep busy,
one of them being
to tuck ourselves in till tomorrow.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 24, 2023
And if you seek a meaning
somewhere deep beneath the surface,
if you seek a core, a source,
a point that doesn’t move
with winds or time or changes of the light,
as you’re coming closer
you will know you hope to find
what touches you, and what you touch,
as home
It is a well known feeling,
it’s a tune
around which symphonies are written –
when you hear them,
you will circle, you will settle,
and your peace
will ring out like a truth you’ve always known,
will sound you as a song that is your own.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 16, 2023
To weather these times,
we ride on what we know will fly –
music, or touch, or high fantasy –
we find what takes us high
to keep our heads above the rising mire
Whether these times
encompass the swift end of all we knew,
or herald the bright dawn
of what we know must come,
we’ll need the touchstones
of everything we love
to bear us through them,
to bring us home.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 31, 2023
This will not be lost
(phrases snatched
like images from dreams,
nothing predetermined
nor tallied, after the fact)
This doesn’t need to be a riddle –
it can be the sweet way you find yourself
after a full day – weathered,
suffused with heat,
dry after the day’s cold wind,
feeling the strong contrast of the indoors,
thin but solid shell against the roving night
You find yourself within,
at peace, clean, ready for sleep,
willing to let fears and worries go,
learning to trust what holds you safe.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 23, 2023