The sun scorches us
The wind dries us
We only notice on the edges
of our work and our wonder
The brambles trip and prick us,
Some insects bite —
We carry all these things
with a nascent understanding
of how we are owned by this land
and how our love emerges
as we are eroded,
how in this weathering
we become capable,
in this honing
we become something different —
More of the earth, less of the city,
closer to both the land and the sky.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 3, 2015
The sun goes down without coloring,
as confident as it came up,
its gold still shimmering
as shadows rise in the grass,
gracing the underwings of evening birds
and whole bodies
of myriad insects
The hills behind which it dips
are already somber,
the fields are hastening
to join the visual hush
the air cools quickly
when the sun retires,
bird song continues
on into the dusk.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 2, 2015
The tawny insects hover and dart,
the swallows flit and dive,
the turkey vulture wheels, light through its wings
showing them golden from beneath
Sparrows chase each other through the brambles
flying low and straight,
a pair of doves coo and flutter
from fence to fence
Blackbird warbles ripple the air like water,
Sparrow trills and whistles magnify the sun,
the wind teaches me to breathe
in the broad generosity
of this land, this day.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 17, 2015
We’ll ride on the memory
of a tree full of birds,
We’ll hold it to us
amid the roar of traffic
as hearth to our hope fires,
promise of home,
a place for our dreams to be landing
Many a span we have to cross —
seasons and processes,
efforts, expenditures,
many occasions we’ll have for rising
to feats that we’ve never yet dared
Far away, in a pasture
that old oak stands
and the birds come and lodge in it
singing and flocking
Later, the quiet night
will rest in its branches,
wind-sighing lullaby
soothing its sleep
It will wait for us, too,
standing through rain,
through spring kissed air
till we return
to breathe with it again.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 20, 2015
I’ve come to where I thought was home,
five hours along the interstate, one afternoon —
Electric lights, and lights of our belonging
circle, not quite settled, in my mind
It feels like parts of us
that should be home
are not yet here —
Points of future that our thoughts took flight on,
Points of intention waiting to be filled,
Points of departure for our next adventure
not finding stillness in this quiet house
We need a bigger circle,
one that holds these all,
to lasso all these points of thought
and bring them home,
to focus them in unity
and make them strong
enough to hold the weight
of our endeavor.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 15, 2015
Just as a certain breath
brings forth a flute’s sweet tone,
a certain stroke
the crystal bowl’s hum,
just as a harmony locks in
to where it thrills you to the bone,
When you find home
you’ll know.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 16, 2015
Other people have loved this land before.
Signs of their presence,
in leaning posts and rusted fence wire
are unmistakable. And in the fact
that this is pasture — grass
must have been mowed last year
But something else calls out —
an echo of my footfalls,
generations old, perhaps,
And how this love that rises
from the land
must have captured others
They must have felt held,
just like this, in the sun, the air,
the solitude
and the quiet endurance
of all things living,
all these things that wait
for our full return.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 14, 2015
I curl in the domestic purr,
the gurgling dishwasher,
the music in the other room,
the goldening of light around the lamp
as evening falls outside
The coziness breathes through these
but it is made of the collected warmth
of this day’s gifts —
the affluence of feeling
they have been enough
to sustain me through this curve of time,
to stoke my inner lights
and this day’s grace.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 3, 2015
We start to look away
from all the things we thought
we cared about —
mementos, milestones, celebrations,
everything we thought would mark success
The taste of heaven
tingling on our tongues
drives us, hungry,
toward something we’re not finding
in the old pursuits
We seek it
in every place we’ve seen it —
smiles of strangers, twinkling eyes of friends,
wild abandon of winter colors in the land
and the promise of souls touching
hinted in those
inexplicable
sudden moments
when the uncountable
Importance of Everything
gleams clear.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 16, 2014
We are made to speak with the earth,
Soles to press to loam,
Skin to sing the pure vibrations,
Tongue to taste the curling air
that bears the tale of everything alive
We are made to speak with the earth,
Eyes as emissaries, catching shafts of light,
relaying truth of all that lies within —
blue cast in the scent of oceans,
red in sun-warmed soils,
green and russet wetland grasses,
silvers aromatic in pine and sage,
rosemary
This has long been hidden
under roads and floors,
the pictures all presented
through small and separate windows
so we haven’t known
what they all mean together,
haven’t known how they comprise a whole
But still the earth will call us,
pull us out from where
the dry pursuits have trapped us,
Lead us by some image, by some zephyr
to the place that owns us,
to our land.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 13, 2014