There’s room for you here —
There’s room for that way you walk,
all business and purpose,
room for your boyish confidence
and your sweetness
and how you desire to trust deeply,
There’s room for your enthusiasm
and your eager joining in
The boy in you
who never grows up
will win the day every time
because he is ever willing
to give his whole large heart
for the rush of joy
in having it received.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 8, 2015
It doesn’t matter what your demons are.
Demons are not a factor in the work.
It doesn’t matter who has told you
for however long
that you’re not worthy
It doesn’t matter
what your regimens have been,
how you have marshaled all your forces,
whether you succeeded,
how you failed
This one thing
is revealed to you
beneath all that,
for once not requiring of you
any kind of change,
for once not measuring you
against any standard
except yourself,
to which you stand exactly
as you were made to be —
so loved, so celebrated,
so ineffably perfect
at being who you are.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 24, 2015
This love was always
such a simple thing —
love of your bones, your limbs,
your snuggle, your warm, heavy head
How could I fail so utterly
to know my only duty
was to pass that love still gleaming,
my bone to yours, shiny and smooth,
clear, unequivocal,
holy and pure?
Here is my prayer —
in your presence to see
that this crucial transmission
has always been given,
with joy to perceive
that you’ve always received it,
it never depended on me.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 23, 2015
I will see you,
I will see your hopes and your desires
I will see your fears
and what will assuage them
I will see your secret boxes
and the treasure glowing through
their breathing walls
They will become transparent —
I will see what’s growing in them
and how, through whatever
old protective thicket,
they find their way out.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 13, 2015
Beneath the sky
my phone reports as cloudy,
my love darts up
to the soft curved body
of the gull flying low overhead,
pale morning color
glowing around its belly
And I feel sure
that it receives the love
as all bodies are designed to do —
receptors and transmitters
of what shines
brighter than light.
So I begin my prayer:
“Our.”
©Wendy Mulhern
June 5, 2015
I let out all my breath,
I pause,
wait for the touch point,
wait for where I can catch
the feeling and the timing
of your breath rising
so I can ride up with you
to the high ledge
and perch there till you’re ready
to swoop down
With every breath
I’m reaching inward
through the layers of our facades,
our constructs,
feeling for the inner contact
where we have flown
under the barriers
and can soar freely
in the vast common realm
where we have seen each other,
recognized our respective infinities,
have been seen by each other.
Ah, bliss! — open flight
in the pure laughter of recognition,
in the silvered harmony
of inner song.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 16, 2015
Love touches every surface
as eagerly as water seeping
into soil, finding each tiny crevice
and filling it suddenly
Love goes in infinitely small,
embracing every grain of thought,
of being. The intimacy of being known
closer than I ever could imagine,
of knowing something by the way
it touches me
opens me out
like a chestnut frond —
so much unfolding
from one little bud.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 27, 2015
(from our conversation)
We come to discover
(again and again, it seems)
that there is nothing we can gain
by iron will, by lining up
the vectors and the dominoes of force,
by straining, with the tension of our eyebrows
(ache in our eye sockets from sharpness of the focus)
for what we feel is right
We learn that in our present love,
so constantly re-flooded
by new unfolding wonder,
revealings of the bud, the bloom, the leaf,
the smile, the creativity, the insight —
In this response, the love that feeds us
even as we give it,
is all the power to open out the world.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 19, 2015
Love is the elemental
impulse of everything,
the kernel of desire
that seeds all life
and brings it forth,
the essence of
the negentropic drive
propelling the development
of all life forms
and the grand dance
of all of them together
Love is all-encompassing permission
for things to be
what they are,
constantly, just where they are
in every now.
Love is the joy
that celebrates each being,
the profound attention
to all the fractal unfoldings
of each entity, the delight
in the harmony of all
Love is the listening,
Love is the witnessing,
Love is the blessing
Love is cause,
Love is motive,
Love is why.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 14, 2015
When the fuel of our stories was spent,
when we had hurled our “perspectives”,
demanded to be heard,
burned up all our points of persuasion,
set forth our posturing
and watched it fall
We finally had to admit
What held us together
was far stronger
than what held us apart
and it felt better to find a way
to concede our points
than to win them
And our only reason
for bringing the whole thing up
was our need
to be closer together.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 7, 2015