My boots fill up with daisies
as I walk the fields, tending trees,
my hands pick up the smell
of dock and tansy from my weeding,
they don’t look very clean as I offer
handfuls of blueberries I picked
I reflect that, growing up in suburbia,
I never touched the dirtiness required
to tend the whole circle of life.
Now I am learning more
about being of the earth.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 20, 2020
1.
Some trees will be happy
with what I’ve done,
some may be already dead –
things I do in time, or not in time,
things I don’t do enough, or do too much,
maybe one or two things just right
2.
I started thinking about my dreams,
how even keeled they are,
while full of travel and new places
and old places and the things I’m doing,
and I thought, it’s good to be even keeled,
but why not happy? Why not filled with joy, exultant?
Or why not deeply moved, or touched with haunting music?
3.
The swallows chatter outside, excited about their nest.
We are excited, too, eager to see their new family emerging.
The late sun sifts across the field.
There’s a sock in my lap.
No conclusion.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 31, 2020
A day of rain and fire,
tending trees and tending hearth,
learning of needs, and learning of power,
and the long journey
in which one can clasp the hand of the other
if briefly, as promise of a partnership further on
It is a day to see the field of daisies as a forest,
immeasurably long to trek through
yet coming to the end
sooner than I might think.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 30, 2020
photo by Edward Mulhern
Now that I’m sure
all contests are over
(no one to tally my merits,
not even me)
What do I have but this day
and its sounds?
Trees dripping from recent rain,
blackbirds at the pond,
towhees and turkeys,
sparrows and mourning doves,
others whose names I don’t know
What do I have but this day
and its learnings, steps on the ground
through the rain loosened mud,
things we will build, and things that will wash away,
What do I have but this day?
©Wendy Mulhern
May 18, 2020
This is the kind of day the land needs,
drinking the rain, soothed and eager,
catching a different kind of breath
when the rain stops, and sun catches
the bright raindrops on leaves and flowers
As for us, we try to do our outside tasks
between the showers, sometimes successful,
sometimes caught, while our dirt road
swims with red-brown rivulets,
and plants flatten for a moment, till the next,
when we can almost see them growing.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 14, 2020
Grand plans notwithstanding,
life comes to us,
unfolding in small ways,
whether or not our presence
has anything to do with it
Far from our former need
to know everything yesterday,
we are content to notice what we do
Slowly the net comes together
to hold us graciously
in the web we hoped to make
Visions of how it may look later
entice us, appearing, as they do,
from wisps already here.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 26, 2020
The little birds, one by one,
show us the form behind their songs –
red winged blackbird, mourning dove,
song sparrow, robin, towhee
Big birds, too – the ravens
with their laughs and clicks
and loud, labored flap across the sky,
geese with their commotion,
and turkeys with their funny ways
They like things about us –
our fence, our flowers,
the puddles and the dust baths
our presence has provided
We like things about them, too –
their sounds, their swoops
and how they fill the land with life –
swift catch of joy,
warble of the heart.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 18, 2020
And this is what it feels like
to step out of my back door
into my backyard
and walk
to my friend, the oak tree,
sheltering many birds
which I hear more than see
Turkeys near the fence,
green springing up everywhere,
afternoon wind, though strong,
not cold
This is what it feels like to live here,
which maybe I do now
and sometime I will for sure.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 9, 2020
The wind through the fence
as vocal as any bird
speaks of the artifacts
of our presence –
not yet picturesque
except perhaps from some perspectives
Trees we’ve planted –
some of them rise
above their blue tubes –
others we take on faith
or on imagination,
visualizing groves
We have made mud swaths
where there was grass,
we have made piles –
of tools, of compost,
of equipment
Things are still beautiful
in varying lights of day and night.
We’ve made them less so,
but hope that’s only for a time,
©Wendy Mulhern
April 7, 2020
I look for what is framed
in the constancy of rain –
the trees down by the river,
the box that shelters us
We may trade it in
for a surfeit of sleep,
a slacking off of work
(on cue from the sun)
We have music
in lieu of warmth,
warmth in lieu of light.
Robins and deer and turkeys
have what they need
in the wet expanse
of the wide outside.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 30, 2020