The trees hold this most gracious web
against the heat,
limbs clasped above to shelter, sacred,
the hallowed shade
When we enter, the holiness
is already there,
like it was waiting for us.
Or maybe we complete the arc
when we receive their peace.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 15, 2020
Follow this brightness
back to its source,
see if you can fathom
what could bring it forth
morning by morning,
day after day
The magnitude of it, for one thing,
and the fineness of its resolution,
and the way we are given our place here,
in wonder and awe,
and illumined the same.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 11, 2020
The swallows may fledge
today or tomorrow,
their parents are showing them
how it is done
I relate to these little birds
doing this thing, with no prior certainty
how it will go –
to fly off a beam and the rest of the day
try to work out
how to regain your altitude
Parents and, so it seems, other flock members
swooping in close, pecking, cajoling,
big clunky humans watching and guarding,
planning to help you up if you should fail
But you made it! The tight spiral up,
one almost miss,
and there you were back on the beam,
eager to snuggle back into the nest,
everyone cheering, especially us.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 5, 2020
I haven’t yet lived in a house
that birds want to fly into –
this one, being unfinished,
seems to offer enticements,
all these rafters, all these open spaces,
and the wind that makes itself at home here
These structures we make for ourselves
are not unnoticed by others –
they move in, they make a place for themselves,
as has always been intended
through all the time of living –
we make room for each other,
we share the land.
My boots fill up with daisies
as I walk the fields, tending trees,
my hands pick up the smell
of dock and tansy from my weeding,
they don’t look very clean as I offer
handfuls of blueberries I picked
I reflect that, growing up in suburbia,
I never touched the dirtiness required
to tend the whole circle of life.
Now I am learning more
about being of the earth.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 20, 2020
I sit waiting for what the evening will tell me.
It speaks in the voice of little birds,
songs and hopes so much larger
than their frames,
It speaks in the voice of frogs
and in the cooling breeze
If I don’t understand its language,
maybe I will later
as threads come together,
as things grow to intertwine.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 24, 2020
This is the kind of day the land needs,
drinking the rain, soothed and eager,
catching a different kind of breath
when the rain stops, and sun catches
the bright raindrops on leaves and flowers
As for us, we try to do our outside tasks
between the showers, sometimes successful,
sometimes caught, while our dirt road
swims with red-brown rivulets,
and plants flatten for a moment, till the next,
when we can almost see them growing.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 14, 2020
At twilight, midst the evening calls
of robins, blackbirds, flickers, other singers,
I hear the turkeys flying up to roost –
the loud clap of their wings, the landing,
which sounds almost like a crash,
the rather muted commentary
I don’t see them, but I know their sound,
for other years they’ve roosted
in trees near us,
and I could watch them settle in,.
After they’re quiet, after it’s dark,
the geese start up –
many a point to settle
before they call it a night.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 8, 2020
The life you feel between your toes,
the squish of mud, the flowing stream,
can curl into your feet, can swirl
in all its earth affirming splendor
through your form. The calls of birds
which grace the air, affirm
the same current. We are not alone here.
We are riding life, trilled in the atmosphere,
caught up in song.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 21, 2020
The little birds, one by one,
show us the form behind their songs –
red winged blackbird, mourning dove,
song sparrow, robin, towhee
Big birds, too – the ravens
with their laughs and clicks
and loud, labored flap across the sky,
geese with their commotion,
and turkeys with their funny ways
They like things about us –
our fence, our flowers,
the puddles and the dust baths
our presence has provided
We like things about them, too –
their sounds, their swoops
and how they fill the land with life –
swift catch of joy,
warble of the heart.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 18, 2020