The green blades don’t try
to inhabit last year’s stalks,
pressed by wind and rain
into the earth
(though they grew high
and pioneered so much)
The green blades
ride the surge of life upward,
energy released from where it waited underground,
springing up and up to harvest sunlight
There’s no need
to cart the old stalks away —
they will decay
while new hay rises vibrant,
lush, thick, tall,
taking the field.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 3, 2015
1.
I see the moon through mist,
I see the subtle loveliness of clouds
that move like lace across her face,
and how she laughs as they change her shape
just for a moment
2.
I think about the spread of colors, where they appear —
Red rolling into green through luxurious russets,
Golds darkening to ambers in the rich wood,
Plum, wine, umber, concentrate to near black:
It comes clear to me why pink is not a part of red
though sky and ocean share the name of blue
3.
I think of what I see as I drift towards dream,
how colors rise up out of darkness
and when, to my closed eyes,
the light of thought appears,
defining the forms as they emerge from shifting splotches
carrying me off into the vision that reprises
all the things I didn’t know I saw.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 2, 2015
Strong wind from the south.
The sky has angels in it —
broad wings stretched out
against the fervent blue
bearing word of change
The water speaks of sun and cloud —
silver sparkle, metal gray,
Small children play at lake side,
my tears just out of range
The girl plays with her dad,
the boy plays alone.
They want to play together
but can’t quite make it happen
I help myself to some of their longing
while warm wind intermittently
brings the scent of blossoms
Cormorants and gulls
sit out on pilings,
Some gulls fly low
playing knock-you-off,
Coots float in flotillas
bobbing in the waves
This day, and what will save it
fade in and out like wind and sun
taking their time
before tomorrow’s rain.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 27, 2015
We’ll ride on the memory
of a tree full of birds,
We’ll hold it to us
amid the roar of traffic
as hearth to our hope fires,
promise of home,
a place for our dreams to be landing
Many a span we have to cross —
seasons and processes,
efforts, expenditures,
many occasions we’ll have for rising
to feats that we’ve never yet dared
Far away, in a pasture
that old oak stands
and the birds come and lodge in it
singing and flocking
Later, the quiet night
will rest in its branches,
wind-sighing lullaby
soothing its sleep
It will wait for us, too,
standing through rain,
through spring kissed air
till we return
to breathe with it again.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 20, 2015
Light answers light —
the brightness multiplies
Heat is not the same:
heat flows towards cold —
the same desire perhaps
but different mode
Heat spreads its blanket out
towards all who seek it,
cooling down with distance,
still too generous to hoard
We make heat inside —
we make it from our substance,
from our thoughts.
We feel and feed the small fire
that warms like coals
somewhere behind our hearts
So we come to know
the essence of this gift,
the little inner furnace
by which we recognize the sun.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 3, 2015
photo by Eric Mulhern
It may seem chaotic
but there is one force pulling us all
And the intelligence
with which we’re all connected
can accommodate
every single need
This grand dance goes on
in every scale of size —
within the galaxies of molecules
and in the tensile tug of stars
And we can feel it
in the way we slide together
and the kinetic transfer
of exhilaration
We can feel it in the stillness
where the interlocking circles
find perfect balance
all along the endless chain of life.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 17, 2015
Other people have loved this land before.
Signs of their presence,
in leaning posts and rusted fence wire
are unmistakable. And in the fact
that this is pasture — grass
must have been mowed last year
But something else calls out —
an echo of my footfalls,
generations old, perhaps,
And how this love that rises
from the land
must have captured others
They must have felt held,
just like this, in the sun, the air,
the solitude
and the quiet endurance
of all things living,
all these things that wait
for our full return.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 14, 2015
Consider my body
and how it moves —
the reach and balance points,
the arcs extended
through my spine, my limbs —
consider how it spins
and how it leans and stretches
There is no moment
when it is not made of motion.
Even at its most still,
the counterpoints of rise and fall,
of soft and taut
are what define it
It’s not a mass of matter
waiting to be activated.
It’s not comprised of elements
that might move.
It is the actual movement
as clearly defined by my thought
as the vortex form
is governed by its rippling imperative —
cohesion of the liquid
and the gravity that draws it
and the honored channels
through which it flows
My body is like that —
transparent, wave formed,
kinetic,
whirling through the dance
of present tense.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 11, 2015
photo by Edward Mulhern
The halo rests around my eyes –
I see it everywhere I look —
Red dogwood in the heaven of the winter sun,
contented trills of frogs and blackbirds
And in these moments, a lightness,
borne by the sound of wind chimes
and the unexpected scent of daphne —
gift of sweetness to the whole yard
My steps walk connected,
along the path, behind the wheelbarrow,
and in the gentle placement, day by day
of what must next be done
and how to do it,
and how illumination is provided
in the glow of each thing touched,
each touch received.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 26, 2015
This is not my dormant season:
Every day, the sap is running
smooth and cold and sweet
along my inner courses
as the fresh form swells and claims new space,
ventures out across the wheeling rays of day,
skin touched, as for the first time,
by sun, by rain, in the eager stretch of greening
that meets the tingling air
And in the unseen places
vast networks of fine and tender roots
spring out along the paths within the soil
This is how it is —
selves of yesterday
fall off like sheathes, like scales,
each day I give myself to this life.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 20, 2015