You, too, may be delivered
into the calm, into the certainty
of abiding peace. This place where
no storms, threatened or in full rage,
can even come close to you.
This because you have found relationship
that stretches you full out
in the experience of life,
which, when awakened,
makes every storm seem small
Anything, any living thing,
can bring you there.
You will have sure access to it
when you bring others.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 25, 2023
And suddenly today
I feel the way I felt
when we were young –
grown up and setting out to find
whatever was the journey that was called our lives,
and coming back together for a holiday,
the major strife of growing up behind us,
creating home with laughter, as families do
Today my sense of failing falls away,
and I see we have been living well –
each of us has our own sufficient pile
of life lived
And I see there is a grace
that doesn’t measure things like that –
grace that unfolds second by second
through all the seconds
in which we live.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 12, 2023
My hope is that we’ll live to see
bricks of oppression crumble,
as the dendritic seep of life
laces through everything,
and what’s alive is strengthened,
and what is not of life
becomes increasingly irrelevant
Our strength will not be
the rules we were forced into,
won’t be the structure imposed from without
See? This kernel of strength
grows within us,
this network of strength
makes its own innate order,
this blooming of strength
fills our minds with its fragrance
and ushers us into our own.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 28, 2023
Life doesn’t end. Stories do,
and so their endings can be happy,
tied up at their full circle, a flouncy bow
showing
all these arcs had meaning –
that which drew us forth
intended that we find
what we are seeking
Life is always starting up the next thing.
Stories satisfy because they give us
endings we can rest in
And so you know – I learned
I didn’t kill those bees –
just sent them home
to the neighbors’ waiting hive,
where they seem happy.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 24, 2023
Light glimmers on green grass,
light like a laugh, light like
the swoop of flight
There is more here
than can be understood
in carbon cycles,
though that has its own beauty
This moment of uplift,
this mingling of sight and joy,
this delight of sharing essence
with another life form
is what will shine us
ever more clearly
in the eternity
which we know as home.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2023
I suddenly find myself
on this strange bus,
memories and old connections
blinking through like lights through moving windows,
phantom reflections easily
plowing into the opposite lane,
and though I mostly
parse these images with no concern,
I also notice their entraining lap,
kaleidoscope of worlds
in orderly collision,
ways we see our lives
along this ride.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 30, 2023
I find myself connected
as paths fan out dendritic
like breath within, like hyphae,
like the T in Boston
I find myself suffused with such affection
as this life moves through me,
filling and sustaining me,
the lines of generations
deepening connection,
the web of shared perception
annulling time.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 14, 2023
I come upon this here,
my life, it would seem,
a bend of road, all these things
placed for some purported purpose,
and rain that’s fallen here –
how it has puddled
A road with mud and gravel,
a road with evening sky,
the path I travel,
a way to sometimes fly.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 13, 2023
Considering structure,
the lock and the brace of it,
over and under,
the link and the lace of it,
eager connection, reciprocal, strong,
stretch and contraction,
heart of the song
*
There is nothing mindless here –
within this temple, it all comes clear –
in taut tensility appears
a firm support, the space to care
*
So interlocked, this life extends
through inner and through outer
realms of space –
the loving structure that allows
the soft and still points,
steadfast protection that gives rise to grace.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 10, 2023
Well, the day won’t live itself –
the wood will not be chopped and stacked
if we don’t do it. The garden plot
won’t prepare itself for planting.
But the clouds will roll on through,
sun glad-handing among them,
the deer will make their rounds,
and in the subterranean
channels of thought,
the unseen steps you take
may be the greatest thing that’s happening.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 1, 2023