Kindle my candle –
incandescent kindness,
my heart, my hearth,
my earth, my art,
my kin, my ken,
enchanting.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 22, 2023
Akin
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Tag Archives: love
Gentleness and laughter
I’ll take gentleness –
it’s better than offense.
It gives a landing place
where anything that’s beastly
can snuff and settle,
turn around three times
and fall asleep, maybe even feeling
gratitude for being let down softly
I’ll take laughter – it ripples over
anything that otherwise might snag.
It turns a snarl into a song,
lets us feel happy,
lets us be together
as day glides into evening,
easy forgiveness replenishing affection.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 21, 2023
Forming
Last light across the field,
glory again revealed –
day by day we wend our way
toward gracious
What we see outside, within,
unveiled across the hours,
across the years –
the opportunity to see it glow with grace
in every beat of presence
steadily appears
Where we are now, partially unformed,
we’re still beloved –
this early space where things seem messy
still reveals the lovely stuff we’re made of,
and shows the processes whereby
we rise to meet what loves us,
always welcome,
always welcomed home.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 15, 2023
Sunburst
Moments can come so clear –
light over the hills, between the rain,
sudden declaration of love’s presence
after the dream of dark times
So I see I have a choice,
and why would I ever
choose anything but love?
Why would I scribble dark marks
across the page of what I see,
what I tally, what I hold in thought?
Sunlight dances out of the shadows,
love slips in between complaint
and offers softness.
Light is what we see,
and love is what we know.
Within us all is power
to make it so.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 6, 2023
Beyond the curse
The love I had for you
was so much bigger
than the tiny locus
through which the story said
it had to come,
so much bigger than our forms
It started teaching me,
though I was slow to learn,
to cast my sense of you and me
much wider than the noose that claimed
it must contain us,
contain, constrain, with time and space,
and all the things we knew we didn’t understand
I look up now to contemplate
how we might be to each other
beyond the myth of human birth and death,
beyond possession and responsibility,
and hidden terror at the thought of failure
We would be loosed from those constricting ties,
and wouldn’t love each other any less –
it wouldn’t be proprietary,
but knowing you, I’d still be blessed.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 4, 2023
Simple
Featured
Our tentative offerings,
our hapless lurching –
towards what we wish,
away from what we fear
Our ill-fated attempts
to make some sense
of you, of me, of work, of friendship,
can hold together
no better than
marbles balanced on each other
They roll away so quickly
in haphazard rattling,
and what holds us together?
Yet here we are.
Call it miraculous,
or call it a simple fact of being,
one that helps us
more than we know.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 23, 2023
Wisdom
All of us are foolish,
and all of us are wise,
and most wise when we’re tender with each other,
and allow each other’s foolishness
to roll off like water,
evaporate and disperse
in the cooling awareness
of our sweet presence
and the warming radiance
of what loves us.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 21, 2023
Holding
There is a happy way to be,
a happy way to hold you –
hold you like water,
where you know
there are no holes for you to fall through
Hold you like a bowl
that lets you take its shape,
and lets you be yourself,
and lets you ripple,
but doesn’t lose you out the sides
This way of holding you
lets you be at peace,
and lets you find yourself
and quench your thirst.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 20, 2023
Patience
This is the patient work:
letting every frond unfold,
fronds within fronds, fractally onward,
Letting each discovery
be its own wonder,
newness blazing out,
connections coming back around
Being on the ground
and letting every step be grounded,
no perception skipped over, glossed over,
taken as a given
Thus will every moment feel its value,
all the beings know their solid worth,
each idea unfold in pure perfection,
heaven well established in the earth.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 18, 2023
Overcome
This is just the beginning –
new sense lending new sight,
truth always there – now known,
what this knowing gives rise to
I’ve been remembering
how love’s currents feel inside me,
the rippling light streaming through,
opening me up, my willing
flowing following after where it leads
I’ve been thinking
of the other places this applies –
all of them – what gets swept away,
but more importantly
what shines forth in its place.
Indeed, the world
is completely overcome.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 30, 2023