Fire’s heat
has filled the stones,
lulled our bones,
defended and defined our home
The rain has likewise
owned the outside,
sending its grey waves
across the hills,
softening the earth,
raising the green
Now night has fallen
upon us all,
and we’ll range
through concentric circles
of every here we may remember
or imagine.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 10, 2023
I took a moment to receive
the companionship of softly dripping skies,
and clouds illumined by some moon through them –
the quietness of being outside
as night rolls through the land
Inside, we have the light, the fire, the music,
and the same equilibrium smoothing everything,
filling the crags with smiles.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 1, 2023
Hold me in the hollow
of the waxing crescent moon,
in the halo of the memory of day,
let me cruise as softly
toward the dark horizon’s hills,
soothed in my sweet hammock’s gentle sway
Stars have been infrequent
in this recent time of year –
rain has owned the music of the night,
but frogs will sing for rain or stars,
and I –
I’ll take in either with delight.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 3, 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 path I walk
so many times.a day
(and now at night,
my lantern faintly
showing me the way,
soft clouds lit up
by just a touch of moonlight,
soft air against my face)
is not without its thoughts of future –
what this place may sometime be –
but seems to have less of the past,
our forward press so steady on,
and, too, the sense of dissolution,
of all the past now found
to have been founded on illusion,
and the need to step ahead
lest my dissolving footprints
catch up to me.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 21, 2021
The night deepens in,
the moon starts its climb,
you have gone up to the work site
to look at the low fog and the high stars,
up to your ears in cricket song,
your thoughts pulled back again
to the progress of building,
all the little steps and things to think of,
things to redesign, things to figure out
Till the fog and stars and crickets
call you back again
to the pure magic
of where you are,
till the coalescing chilliness
brings you home.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 2, 2020
Day done, the coolness settled in,
dark enough for lights indoors
but not outside
Cricket choruses pulse distinctly
from different spots –
the group in the old maple
gives way, as I walk by,
to the one in the blackberry patch,
both two-toned, wide-intervaled and strong
Then a moment of relative quiet
before I step among the firs,
where it sounds like more crickets,
but farther off, their pulse more subtle
In this time before night,
they hold the strong cords
that carry us securely
through the transition.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 13, 2020
It’s too dark to see my words
but not too dark to see
how the light falls on the page,
the glow along the center line
where it slopes in, and the orange cast
of the nightlight catching the curve
It was too late to find a poem that night,
shadow shapes showing where the words were
but not enough of thought
to pull it through.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 31, 2020