Tag Archives: nature

Seattle Sun

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The sun comes out
just in the evening
and it is like
giddy laughter after many tears
where you can feel your breathing
like a big drama
now the storm has cleared
though there’s no guarantee
the flood will not return
on the flash of some re-tripped remembrance.

The sun has come
too late to warm the earth
but old, tall trees
shake their shaggy limbs
in deep enjoyment
and send their glow
back through
my no longer spattered windows.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 28, 2013


No Hurry

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There’s no hurry here
in the wayward wandering of bees
or in the darting flit of smaller insects,
No hurry in the dark, damp bed of seeds
as moisture slowly moves in
towards their center
No hurry in their swell, their split,
their first root sprout uncurling
Or in the turn of sun across the sky,
through soft cloud edges burning

All gifts that softly rise
against the glow of muted skies
or in the brilliance
of their unsheathed blue
know in their code
how they must grow
and so they do

There’s no hurry here:
You, too, can walk this calm,
drinking in the strength of days —
your hope, your balm.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 24, 2013


Working

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I was shoveling dirt
and hauling logs
and dragging brush,
and my legs were scratched
and my shoes were full of
rotted log dust,
and as I was pushing
the empty wheelbarrow
back into the back yard,
over the dandelions 
and forest ground cover,
back between the chest-high bracken ferns,
the air spoke to me,
its sweet warmth full of spring scent
with just enough breeze to cool my face.
It embraced me from outside
and filled me up within
so my limbs felt present and comforted,
and it said to me,
“This is exactly where you want to be,
this is exactly what you want to be doing.”
I had to agree.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 12, 2013


Mycelium (and ours)

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In every interaction
I am healed:
In every interaction
I am made whole,
For this is part of me,
This gorgeous web
that reaches out to know,
to know by loving
and to love by knowing,
to heal by seeing
and to be healed
by the gift of having seen.

So we move
expanding underground to fill the gaps,
so we embrace each other
in our understanding,
So we include
everything that lives
within our circle
So we grow,
eternally enfolded
in one Soul.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2013


Not a foreign substance

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I am hard pressed to describe
the slow glide of leaf shadows
gold-rimmed, along the brown bottom
of the glass-smooth, shallow river

They looked like a pod of something living —
One-celled protozoa, magnified many times
They moved like a companionable
group of friends,
drifting down an avenue, arm in arm

The leaves that made them were a different shape —
Pointed, narrow willow leaves
somehow projected into near-round ovals —
And the water’s surface held the leaves so thickly
that they darted from the probing
of my curious hand,
and clung to one another
unless I lifted one
clear away

The ripples that my hand made
radiated out in rings
of gold and shadow
moving slowly out along the river bottom

In my awe and wonder
I only later noticed
from its coolness and its freshness
that this was water
not a foreign substance —
something that I know.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 6, 2013


Elixir

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Full-on Spring,
and the early day
hangs in a feather balance
of warm and cool,
each weighing in
with exquisite tenderness —
constant subtle shifting
singing against my skin
and the air
smells like blossoms and suburbs
and the sweet cleansing
of night breeze
when Spring flowed through me
in the play of mammalian warmth
and clear-sky coldness,
resting me and waking me up
at the same time.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 4, 2013


Through the pass

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The mountain alders
In luminescent jeweled green
Have limbs much thinner than their trunks;
It is their strategy
to grow fast and high
And spread new limbs each year
Against the sky

The darker firs
still wear the garb they wore all winter
Stoically, heroically surviving —
Their springing tips come later in the year.
All along the pass
The wind turns bright leaves over
Dancing spots of white against the green

And we are voyeurs here
Flying through on the interstate
Taking in a scene that ought to cost us
far more effort.
Still it invites us
to leave our hardened corridors
Forge into mystery
And find our green.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 27, 2013


Greening

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Along the ever-surging edge
of what’s alive,
There’s no time
for construction of a casing.
The growing tip is light and soft,
Ever moving into what it is becoming.

The story, the woody stem,
That which will uphold it
over future years
Will come later
in the established corridors
of nurture and support —
The long-stretched-out connection
between root and frond

But its identity,
Its form, its exaltation,
Its phototropic, geotropic
orientation,
The sensitivity, and the sensation,
Are most felt
in this newly forming green.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 26, 2013


Spring Outlook

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Everything has changed:
A keystone puzzle piece explaining everything,
Sun coming out bright after weeks of cold rain,
Warmth quickly filling the long-drained vessels
of human hope,
Brimming over in spontaneous smiles.

Nothing has changed:
All this time, buds were forming,
Plump potential taking shape as furled petals
Which now must open,
Green leaves growing from the draft of sweet sap
Which they make from sun
even in the fully shrouded days.

And this bright goodness —
The thing that fills me up with joy —
Why, it was here all along
The only difference is that now,
Despite all former lack of faith,
I know.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 24, 2013


Mountain Time

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Yeah, I’ve been here a long time
Maybe about as long as a mountain.
I’ve learned to settle in,
Deeply etched by all the watersheds
whose paths I then determine.

Weather brings on its steady drama
Sometimes stilled by me, sometimes augmented
I let things flow through me like that,
Let them change me,
Bring me ever closer to myself
(Canyons of time and tears expose my core)

Today I feel as if
I will be here a long time
Maybe as long as a mountain.
Tomorrow I may feel
ephemeral as a cloud.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 19, 2013