The wind at the tail of the storm
catches me up in excitement,
quick steps of the onset of fall
bring memories rich with delight
Someone, perhaps, has arrived here
in the sweet mix of coming home,
and coming to a favorite place
outside of their daily routine
I am a visitor, outside of time,
I walk here and freely imagine
that, much like the scent of fall leaves on the wind,
I can take in how they might feel.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 26, 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
Various choruses
are not surprised
at my thought coming round to you –
the time of year, they say,
the necessary reckoning …
I don’t know. Could be …
I could choose to be
an old woman, sitting among my shards,
flickers of memories, glints of past light,
Or I could join you here in heart warmth –
what you have always given me,
what you give me still,
helping my ground to new, abundant, life.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 7, 2023
These could be memories,
these could be dreams –
astonishing how they are still here –
we can bring them back to mind
so many years later
But even more amazing –
how my thoughts make pictures
of your words –
you climbing trees
and galloping horses across the field,
the wind through pines
lifting your hair
caught in a shaft of sun,
the sudden recognition of presence
holding you all by itself,
hallowing you in that private expansive moment,
leaving its promise
of blessing and peace.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 22, 2023
Memories flicker like lights
in the fire, in the windows’ reflections,
and their reflections of each other’s light,
dimmer, smaller, greener
in more distant iterations
The lights were real, and they still are,
however faintly I perceived them then,
however tenuous they may seem now
They may not light or warm me on their own,
but they do show me
the constancy of light through all my times,
which, when I turn to now,
lights up my present,
and also all the tunnels of my past.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 4, 2023
(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
Jewelry, small containers,
knick-knackeroo –
we’re getting down to the small stuff
and we’re so far from through
I wonder, will we ever
open this box again?
Will we ever want to use these things,
and if so, when?
These tracks, the leavings
of the course of our lives –
perhaps that’s all they are
and we could leave them behind
like footsteps in the sand
to simply disappear –
Why should it matter what becomes of them,
why give them all this care?
And yet I keep on packing up the boxes
And I think: if I don’t free myself
then something else will –
this is something that I know for sure is true,
but this picture of my daughter in the frame she made –
that’s coming with us,
and this other stuff will, too.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 18, 2022
I shook myself awake
from where I was wandering
through memories of young adulthood,
ways I thought, and things I said and did
The mood had gotten tedious,
a haze of self-dissatisfaction
slouching in, making it hard to breathe
I didn’t ask for this,
didn’t give permission for my mind
to fill with toxins, for the mood
to be this semi-dismal color
So I shook myself awake –
I didn’t need to dwell there
and my past did not require me
to be paraded back, head hung down
For one could also say
that I was young, and that my ignorance
was not my fault (or not entirely)
And one could say
if I have truly woken up
then all of that was just a story –
none of it can cling to who I am,
and none of it can sully who I was.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 6, 2020
Take a periwinkle crayon,
follow it down the whorl of memory
to the shiver of feeling it evoked –
not the easy love of magenta and blue-green,
but a tremulous liking,
flavor and texture
with a sliver of tears, perhaps,
a taste to grow into
Remember magenta berries,
the juicy ones with the pithy crunch
and the flavor unlike most anything –
a little sweet, a little floral,
which we ate, not knowing their name
or if they were edible,
along the high hedged path to Whitney’s house
Consider sisterhood –
its bittersweet, its viney tendrils,
multicolored and intimate,
a tie to grow into.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 4, 2020
Before today I never heard
the chittering of ice
or seen the way waves change
as water freezes —
ripples split against the frozen edge,
some rolling over,
some undulating under,
emerging preternaturally calm
but suddenly refracted
by fractured floating floes
Others have also been here
and also tossed rocks
to see if they would stay or sink,
they, too, may have been amazed
by the constant conversation
and the musical propensities of ice
Others also walk on ground
that bears years of memories,
their path can sink subtly into the past —
they can relive the former times
just as carelessly,
even as today lays down
new views and thoughts and feelings
to be revisited another time.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 13, 2019