Although the tales seemed so important,
perhaps they weren’t –
perhaps all of us let pass
so many potential rides
to where we thought we’d go
But we’re here anyway,
however much the same or different it is
from what we thought
And what I now know is,
I can’t default to death –
it never was a train that I could board
However long it takes,
I’m bound for immortality
in my return to knowledge
of who I am.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 27, 2023
Nothing really broke except a taillight.
Though it seemed for a moment
that every path had shattered,
that there was no more sense
and nothing more to follow,
in fact, the way that we could navigate
was still there – we could still take
the needed next steps,
we could come home
with a load of trees
and a replacement part,
and our sensibilities
could break through like sun
after all that rain.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 7, 2023
We welcome what sweeps through us
and makes us new,
we welcome sun, we welcome rain,
we welcome stars that show up briefly
at five a.m., and clouds the hills snag,
while they’re blowing through
We call it life
for being so much more than we can fathom,
we call it love for how it makes us
glad we’re here.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 28, 2023
When you know what’s true,
the cabinet of stresses
opens its doors
and lets everything fall out –
all the pressures, all the worries,
chagrin, regret, despair –
They dissipate, and the place they were
begins to fill in
with the obvious order
of things that are living –
branches reaching up,
roots extending down,
everything expressly purposed –
nothing random, nothing useless
The clatter of clutter
gives way to the hum of living,
and its clear alignment
shows itself to be
all that was ever here.
When you know what’s true,
you see and feel it.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 13, 2022
(from the virtual biking philosophers’ notebook)
What you remember
belongs to you. You can have
the saturation of a bright red crayon
and the sound it makes
when it leaves its waxy mark on the paper
on a hot day in Pasadena
You can have the bright cold
of blue green water,
salty and enlivening
at Menemsha
You are free to weave dreams
of all of these, or you can layer them
with the view out the window,
you can use them to craft possibilities
for future moments
You can transmute them as needed,
you can harvest and employ
their secret power,
you can enjoy them
as light-mixed colors
adding riches to your present time.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 27, 2022
You may count down the numbers,
take us out one by one,
you may flood or burn us
thousands at a time,
you may boast your power,
you may crow your victory,
but no way can you actually win
You say we’re decimated,
but we have something you don’t have,
and never can, something you can never take from us
You boast of deadness,
but that means nothing,
for you are dead, and what we have is life –
it’s just a card trick
to seem to take our numbers,
for life is something you have never taken.
You may seem fearsome,
you may rage on and on,
but we will still be standing when you’re gone.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 23, 2022
The cushion of family,
soft as morning fog,
hugs everyone
Smiles are harvested easily
for what they feed us,
and life is celebrated,
not just by us
but by everything touched
in these moments of being,
this connectivity that holds us all.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 21, 2022
Night shortened by an eastbound flight,
sun comes out in Boston,
more time to wait
Little birds live in airports,
so it seems, and others hop around outside –
strange habitat, overarching concrete
and some landscape trees
As for me, I’ve watched and smiled,
listened, slept, written, cried,
and, not having traveled in some years,
am doing fine
Who knows about this thing called life?
Who knows? Or time, for that matter –
our purpose flows somewhere deeper
than the place these tokens mark,
still rich and powerful
to pull us swift along.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 17, 2022
Contrary to popular lore
(I must remind myself)
fearlessness is not irresponsible
I am not required
to file dutifully
through the ugly predictions,
the “realistic” expectations
which have nothing to do,
ever or finally,
with the substance of what we are
It is not irresponsible
to be unimpressed, to be uncowed,
to know the fire within us
is far greater
than what might come to take us out,
that they which be with us
(the Spirit and the Life)
are more than anything that seeks
to them us in.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 14, 2022
The day will lead you
to one and another of your mind’s pursuits,
your body eager to serve,
nourished by curiosity and engagement
What you attend to
will grow lush – obstacles notwithstanding –
you will rise like cresting waves to meet them,
the energy bearing you up
not self generated
but yours nonetheless
by virtue of your grand belonging
to the infinity of Life.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 12, 2022