Rejoice,
for your place in Life,
so particular, so vast,
is eternally established:
Who you are,
as singular as your name,
is braided in,
inextricably,
to the epic song
of elemental harmony
You are known,
You are needed,
and your words and actions
will always
bring forth their intended fruits.
Rejoice,
for your names are written in heaven.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 10, 2015
I need these moments
where the perfunctory subsides,
where its detritus —
the weariness, the dread —
ceases to be tossed
against my eyes
And the clear burn
of fervent purpose
lights my steps
and takes me deep
where the life cords course
in swift, braiding channels
surging me sure-footed and alert
through my day.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 8, 2015
Faced with a riptide
or a vortex
Be calm —
There’s less to gain by thrashing
than by tuning in
and waiting for your moment
It’s OK
if you go down a little more
before you surface
There will be something you can use —
An eddy, or a bottom to spring up from
Or a gravitas within,
more weighty than
the surge can heave,
to separate you from the fray,
release you from its inundating force,
let you reclaim your footing
and your course.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 23, 2014
I start to learn
to give up my positions,
start to learn to be the stream
flowing in the knowing
that nothing stationary
has any staying power —
nothing static is true
for more than maybe just a moment
And everything delightful
that endures, that excites,
that lends a constant presence to rely upon
is moving in the current,
being life, being dynamic,
defined in interactions and in vectors,
harmonizing forces,
stable in the action of engagement,
relevant because it’s here, alive.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 5, 2014
Each day I live
is as dependent
on my activity
as is a fountain’s form,
whose dancing plumes
are only seen
so long as it keeps flowing
No grand success of yesterday
saves me from today,
no revelation
releases me from this day’s need
for my salvation
I fail, I fail each day
until I seek my source
which, rising up through me
along its natural course
achieves with ease
what I could not, by will or force,
comprising me for now and ever more.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 25, 2014
They were tired of living on a set,
Tired of days under electric suns
in houses with cardboard walls
with all their plastic food and friends,
their plastic props, their plastic topics
They found themselves longing for loam
with its uncompromising scent,
and wood fire — how these things
cling to your skin and get inside your dreams —
for true work and true harvest
And ways of moving with the land
that leave little need for words,
and no time to worry at
nit-picky issues of their egos
and their relationships —
Finding their unity and their identities
in concert with the present forces
and today’s insistent needs,
the smell of leaves and rain
and the sweet falling to rest
at day’s end.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 22, 2014
My lyric body dances on sound,
Skips along the logs at Richmond Beach,
Leans into the lift of wind,
Sings the tunes that rise up in response
This is the flow
of joy-impelled intent
which moves to celebrate the balances
of all that breathes in concert with the day
and all the ways it touches
and is touched
This is not the mechanism
I was taught was me,
nor yet a chassis I inhabit —
This is the one that flies in dreams
and also here, perhaps,
in the rich euphoria
spanning all my arcs,
connecting me.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 20, 2014
We left our masks at the door —
Masks of norms, masks of respectability,
Each mask stamped from one of several molds
So each of us seemed one of many
We left our cloaks at the door —
Cloaks that hid
our light-charged ascent,
our streaming brilliance,
our quick-electric connecting essence
And we abandoned all our static stories —
Histories that marked our limits,
all the tags, the terms, the titles
all that would excuse, explain
why we were so hemmed in
And all the habits,
all the ways we framed ourselves
(and had been framed)
all the things we named ourselves
(or how we’d been misnamed)
everything we had condemned,
self-condemnation, too —
We left all that behind
when we went through.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 18, 2014
We’ve all spent many weary years
playing “mother may I” to the myth of money.
It’s time to stop.
Who puts a value on our life force?
On our creative impulses and actions?
Who puts a value on our love,
or on our skill, our care, our rapt attention?
Who says we have no value
except what we can monetize?
Each one of us is infinite,
Each has the power to bless,
Each one is worthy of the things we need
to keep us satisfied and well
We have the power
to draw our own true web
to join us hand in hand across the earth.
We don’t need money systems to sustain us,
for that which gives us life
gives us our worth.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 16, 2014
Let me not be fooled
by false happiness,
the narrow sense of sort-of comfort,
the condition-based, conditioned state
wherein, I’m told, I should be satisfied
considering how horrid things could be
Let me not be duped to think
I could be happy
while others suffered,
or could, somehow, deserve
a better life than others
Let me hold out for truth,
wherein the whole huge scam
of merit, fate, sin, reward and punishment
is annulled,
and we all shine forth
in primal innocence,
in native joy.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 15, 2014