Waves like days roll in,
each one a fluid confluence
of wind and tide
and things we can’t see, undersea,
each one worth watching
from where it forms
all the way to shore
and while it dances the sky reflection
up the beach
And the freshness of this one morning,
the one we’re riding on,
breaks through our waiting senses,
splashing its delight
all the way through us.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 20, 2022
Fill my day with something new –
winds across the grasses
assist them in insisting
this is the only now they have –
they will sing and bend and turn
and send their all-important seeds
each on its own journey
It is soul work, it is adventure,
and they do it now as if they were
the only grasses to ever live,
and indeed, as the only ones they see,
that could be so for them
except the ancient hum
intones its timeless song
along their shafts.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 18, 2022
Why it makes me happy
to see the half moon
while looking up to harvest
high growing peas
must be a human thing,
or rather, something things that see
might share, curve of pea reiterated
in the curve of moon,
my needing to look up to reach the peas
occasioning the sighting –
day moon colored like a cloud,
returning, with my sight of it,
all the other times it’s made me glad.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 7, 2022
Wood grain on cedar boards
curving parallel,
path of cirrus clouds across the sky,
the shift in and out of dream
after a day’s work outside,
the transition from maroon to pink
in peach and plum blossoms –
not the same but similar
in the poignancy of their pale colors.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 24, 2022
The rain rolls its music
down the gutters, into the tank
where round echoes replay
the rhythms of trickling,
the pause and rush
that give a cadence like words –
you could easily think
someone was speaking
just beyond the range of intelligible.
Frogs add counterpoint.
For all this,
I am glad.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 2, 2022
Almost full moon
rises to a chorus of frogs,
dewdrops on grass
lit up like so many
tiny nightlights,
secret silver
waiting for morning’s frost.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 17, 2022
The fog walks lofty
across the distant trees
in the early morning
The sun glows bright
across the grass
just before it sets
The sense within me
that calls it beauty
meets these scenes with joy.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 7, 2022
Everyone sings of longer days –
the wheeling geese, perambulating turkeys,
two kinds of blackbirds in the pasture oak.
After dark, the frogs sing in the northern pond.
The ease we feel – it seems we all are led
to reach out and share it,
to make sure everyone enjoys
the coming light.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 3, 2022
I give myself permission
to find myself lighter –
composed of elements
that sparkle and stream,
and mingle with the stream of
what floats in the air,
what circles and kindles tingles,
life leaping in molecules,
sending joy in rolling curves
up along the skin
I give myself permission
to be weighty, propelled by breath into
solid pushback against the floor,
finding the mountain stance
where I will not be moved
It is the same breath
in both cases, the same Spirit –
I walk in kinship with the air and earth.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 25, 2021
I walked out lost
into the silent fog of dawn,
and soon began to find myself …
First chirps of birds – a jay close by,
the turkeys’ distant morning declamations …
A deer appeared, and then another,
moving almost silent, stopping suddenly
on noticing my presence,
heads quickly squared,
ears in a wide Y – then turning to move on
a little faster
I considered: this peace is not
mine to manufacture
with my will or.mind. I can’t
force it from my pen …
Today I walked out looking,
and there was wideness
and there was silence
broken open softly
by beings with their own certainty,
their own way of knowing
I will remember this
for other mornings when I need it.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 15, 2021