It didn’t take changing you,
it only took knowing you,
discerning which of the signals
refracted between us
were actually true,
and which were interlayered shadows
between projection and perception,
not needing to provoke or be responded to
It only took
holding a steady vision
of that which has always loved you –
letting that be my lens,
making my focus clear.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 17, 2020
Today I was waiting,
waiting to emerge,
feeling my light press dimly
through layers of perception,
not quite opaque,
feeling my light press urgent
like running out of breath under water
against a surface the color of ice
And I couldn’t imagine
or couldn’t remember
how I could ever break through,
but coming around
as if from the back,
I seem to have made it OK.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 17, 2020
Forgive me, for I went far too long
without noticing your magnificence.
It’s an affront to your creator,
failing to see
the grand capacity of your imagination,
the worlds you can construct,
the life force you contain,
and the great colors
of your joy, your love, your hope
These are not things to be dismissed,
to be eclipsed
by some petty requirement my will suggested.
These are things to open out my views,
to rejoice over,
to teach me of the dear design of life.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 26, 2020
The gateways to where you want to be
are everywhere. You can find them
in anything that reflects light, in everything
that holds a shadow
You can feel it in the yielding,
the soft give of grace, the melting
of preconceptions into something more liquid,
more bracing
The widening of what you know
of yourself and the world,
that stretches you till you rebound,
perception soaring
to where you see with new and tender eyes,
all things now pure, unburdened from disguise.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 22, 2020
In this world, what I consider possible
is more important than I may fathom –
it is the lie of impossibility
that has kept me from claiming,
in every place I’ve missed it,
my dominion
So let me broaden the tent of my belief
so there is room for happiness,
not just for me – rather, for everyone –
Let them be thrilled and awestruck
by the fact of their own being
Not under some as yet unmet conditions,
Not the false possible conveyed by some “if only”,
but the true possible of This is what we’re here for
and this is how we live, and this is what we are.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 29, 2020
New language arises
in the differentiation of essential oils,
in the attention to small details —
freshness and sequence and timing
There are places in this noticing
for gratitude to take hold
with confident grip
to entrances too small to see —
thread hairs of its roots
reaching in and changing the ground
with what it brings
and what it calls forth.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 18, 2020
You won’t find this answer
in the room of comparison —
it will expose the sensitive film,
and the image
that would rise up in the still darkness
of your own concentration
will be flooded out,
the alchemy aborted
You will find this answer
only as you learn
to close everything out
except the micro movements
of the present moment
as they unfold in timelessness
In that moment
(who can say how long it takes —
days? years? decades?)
you will see.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 20, 2020
These asymmetries
must have their reasons,
a needed distinction
between upper and lower edge,
a way to account
for a difference in pressure, or drag
They must be balanced
by a corresponding weighting
on the other side —
the existence of one reveals
necessities of others
Nature doesn’t deal
in imprecision,
doesn’t throw any shape
carelessly about
Any distortion reveals the influence
of other forces,
the partnering in patterns
greater than oneself.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 18, 2020
In this dimension
there are no lines, really,
only curves that move
as you approach them,
only planes that sport
the spreading shadow of their angle
So don’t think you need
to draw the line —
this understanding is really
about inhabiting the form,
glowing the light from the inside,
feeling the curve and fullness of it —
how that always makes it seem to shift
as the perspective moves.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 17, 2020
Considering a vow of internal silence,
I practice. Let my times proceed
without a narrative, let me take things in
constructing no instructions,
let me see people
without drawing conclusions.
In the ensuing quiet
I may hear
the jokes the ravens tell
across the hills.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 18, 2019