Tag Archives: nature

River Song

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I’ll keep the refrain of the song of the river

           Its rumble and shout as it courses along
   Caressing the rock into smooth, graceful contours
                   High leaping arcs as it thunders on down

             The roil and the roll and the coming together
       Frothy rejoining of channels
Soft curling curve of the eddies returning
      Sloshing back over the rocks

              See how it takes me
                    It captures and fascinates
                            I could behold it forever
            Much later, memory takes it to illustrate
Life-thrumming rhythms within

And I find myself feeling
         we’ve come through a waterfall
             Free falling, crashing, and tumbling out
                  Joy of abandon, then jolt of the reckoning
                         Sinking and wondering:
                              Where are we now?

               Deep in the pool, in the calm underneath
           we remember
       Water is one, and we’ve never been lost or alone
We fall with the force from the source to the ocean
        Far-flung but always at home

     So we rise, so we roll, so we merge
           In the pulsing repeat of the song
      So, smoothly, our courses converge
 In what we have been all along.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 15, 2012



Summer Evening

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Clouds on pilgrimage
seeking the convocation of thunderstorm
drift entranced
kissed in soft pink light
calling forth divinity of sky

They let the current take them
slow and meaningful
toward their unseen goal
Sculpted pink on luminescent blue
transitions into grey on lighter grey
and on into white
against the deepened dark.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 9, 2012



Heather’s birthday beach walk

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Laughing on the beach
Leaning against a log
Laughing at almost anything
(A couple, comical with their dog)
It really doesn’t matter what
It feels so good to be here

Our daughter, stunning in her colors
and her smile
Our son, subtly connected
Our family, now grown,
no longer needing tight control by parents,
can laugh as equals

Walking down the beach
we stop to play
on a see-saw log
The four of us
enacting our collective balance
(me, weighting and unweighting
making the log tip
feeling the delight of flying
my shadow doing a seagull dance)

Low tide, sea wall
Stone stairs washed to slopes,
engulfed by barnacles
Rare rock crazed with cracks
with crystals growing in them
Seagull cries, and human seagull imitations
Climbing the concrete tower that says “keep out”
Walking together in magical languor
No where we’re needing to be
except here.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 7, 2012



Beach Walk

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Bright morning
Walking on the driftwood
Walking on the sloped beach
whose fist-sized stones
roll sideways under foot
Watching rows and rows of tiny breakers
cresting in and in along the shore
Their quiet slaps then echoed in the distance
with the shift of stones —
rock on rock rocking in receding waves

Standing heron, flying gulls, ducks
bobbing out in lines across the waves
Smell of sand and seaweed, sea
Warming sun
paints with shadows on the sand behind the rocks
Scrish of our footsteps
You and I 
walk together, holding hands
sharing stories of our soul journeys
where we go alone
but come together
vectors and trajectories converging
Throwing off old baggage and untying every tether
Awestruck with hope to see
eternity emerging. 

©Wendy Mulhern
July 5, 2012


View out the window

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-Maxwelton Aerie, July 3, 2012


The urgency of growth
captured in a gesture
of kiwi vines reaching —
a faint dusting of red
along the underside of a leaf
light shining through it
Given voice by the songbirds
intimate and plentiful
Celebrated by a wild profusion
of high-climbing roses
in shades of orange and yellow
More flowers as you scan —
fireworks in hot pink
poppies in peach
Pastures beyond
darkened and illuminated in patches
by dramatic skies
Everything is rising up 
in the dance of sun and rain

©Wendy Mulhern
July 3, 2012


Alpaca Shearing

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Feels like an honest day’s work
Hands dirty, clothes dirty
Body fatigued
Easy to slip from attention 
to numbness
and on into sleep

Feels good to work as a team
Never abating the pace of the labor —
Hum of the motion of sharing the effort —
till every last thing is done

Heat of the animals
Heaving and powerful —
Holding them firmly
while soothing them softly
Treat them with iron and silk

The sound and the smell of the shears
Precision and speed of the shearer
The texture and spring of the fiber
Gathered up quickly
and passed to the sorters
in grade labeled baskets
over the fence

And I didn’t feel tired till the pause
when a wave from behind me
rose up and engulfed me
and sent me to where
all the ambient sounds —
bird calls and bleating —
took on different meanings
drifting me closer to dream.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 2, 2012


Angel Wings

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As I was driving home
the sky was full of angel wings —
Angel wings of all kinds
and I 
having slid through two tunnels of sleepiness
(the first one, a battle with my eyelids;
the second, a little closer to surrender)
Was finally awake enough 
to take in their splendid spread
of grays and whites and yellows 
against the generous blue
Portending something
(I hope)
greater than another day of rain.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 27, 2012


Wet June

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I will compose a song
in the tune of June
while the dark clouds
let light in at the distant edges
and four red lilies and one campanula
have opened in the rain
and a squirrel 
chomps almost-ripe cherries
shaking raindrops from the branches
Wet June
cloaking the length of days
so close to solstice
summer so far away.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 13, 2012



I’m in

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(Notes from the third seasonal five women gathering on Vashon)

We have inhabited
a place of waves
an ebb and flow of stories
diverse perspectives that we try to reconcile
the tossing circles constantly recurring
hope baubles bobbing on their glossy surface

They bob against the undertow of sadness
and the mind’s attempt
to close the loop, to claim
the promised satisfaction dearly longed for
We can choose to float there
or step free . . . 

. . . Winds wander
Waves slap along the shore
Clouds display themselves across the sky
I step now from the land of metaphor
into the day
where sun sweetens
and geese parade their young before our eyes
Warm sand and stones smell like seaweed
by my resting face
Bright cold water licks my resting feet

I lie here and consider
Where do I immerse myself?
How do I join in this grand wheeling of the sky?
How do I find grounding in this
aliveness so much greater than
my little “I”?

I’ll take all of it
Whatever is given
Whatever way I can be used
to heal the stories, serve the greater vision
I’m ready
I’ll take all immersions offered

I feel and smell the sun, the sand
the stones, the water
Then the waves come for me
and I’m in.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 3, 2012

Lifelines

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Many years ago,
a dozing vision told me,
“You have a lifeline to a star.”
I sat up, alert, obscurely comforted
that any chasm I might face 
could hold no threat
and that no danger loomed
of finding my life dull and flat
I had a lifeline to a star!
and it would lift me up
across light years and eons
to my dreams

Little did I know
I have so many lifelines —
distant stars the least of them —
right here
Wind touched willow singing in the sun,
Gentle currents sliding softly,
All the gems of eyes that can connect
are lifelines holding everything together
I move and feel them pull against my chest
Inviting me to heft them, find their swing
and catapult myself
in heady, death defying joy
hand over hand along their awesome web
through this bright day.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 11, 2012