Aha!

(in the aftermath of tepid soup)

It wasn’t the soup at all.
It was the opportunity
(missed that time)
to reassess my disappointment
and what I swallowed
by accepting
that what I needed for my comfort
was heat,
and then in thinking,
when I couldn’t get it,
that all there was for me to do
was settle

It wasn’t that I should have found
some perfect way to ask again —
this was a portal
(missed that time)
to seeing things in terms of life
instead of soup,
being supported by
(thus bearing witness to)
the ever present river
comforting us all.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 17, 2019

This Wilderness

This wilderness was prepared
especially for me,
like the belly of a fish
but not so dark and slimy

This wilderness
holds me cocooned
in the place that best promotes
my growth. No room to squiggle,
no chance to be distracted,
to opt out. No way to go
but forward, upward
along the tough but bracing trail

This wilderness
leaves no space for complaint,
Its beauty overwhelms me,
its demands
make me strong. I will stay here
for as long as is required.
I will stay until directed to the city.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 9, 2019

Going Home

Long we have imagined being done
(not even comprehensively, but with a phase)
Long we have imagined going home.
But there’s a truth about the process
we didn’t know to picture —
how we don’t go back the way we’ve come

We have been honed, we have been humbled,
and the things we’ve learned
are more about perspective points than anything —
not that we know more things
but that our lenses
have somehow shifted everything we see

And being done — I now don’t know
what that would look like,
and going home — I’m not sure
where that is,
but in the learning and the leaning
I can say
I’m more myself than I have ever been.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 4, 2019

The Putative Journey

Sometimes it seems
there is so far to go,
so much to learn, so much to purge,
so many constructs to wean myself from

Sometimes I glide along
thinking how close I am
to my arrival, thinking
how far I’ve come,
how comprehensive
my transformation has been thus far

And then I see
how much I’m missing,
how vast the chasm
between my understanding and the truth

Good thing it isn’t up to me!
Good thing my life is held
in beautiful unfolding
where no partial understanding,
no faulty sense of needing to arrive
has any traction.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 3, 2019

Summit

You come back from the mountain
and what gets you is the day to day,
the small decisions and the interactions
that have the same ruts they had
when you were here before —
you think everything should be changed
but it isn’t

This is the challenge
greater than the summit —
to integrate the things you saw
into the fabric of every day,
to walk the same paths
but go up higher,
to taste the mountain air
right where you are.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 26, 2019

Abundance of Years

This time in our lives
joy collects in deep reservoirs
in the slow spaces where time
has made room,
in the lack of will to worry
and the willingness to accept

The widened shapes of our feet
echo a broader knowledge
of what can happen
and how much of that
doesn’t matter at all

Appreciation is a ripe fruit
we can pick without judgment
in the ease of laughter
(less work than fretting)
and the lubrication of many past tears,
in the clarity of coming full
in the abundance of years.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 18, 2019

Rise By Fire

Hold your body to the flame —
you will phoenix-rise again,
this is nothing you can name —
these are your essences made plain

The burning bush is not consumed,
the burning life is fueled by learning,
steady down the steps of days
to your eternity returning

Set your sight on what you are,
glimpsed beneath your deepest hope —
the guiding lights you see afar
are nearer than you’re told

Hold your body to the flame
of all that lights and fuels your being —
this will now define your days,
becoming all you’re seeing.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 14, 2019

Preparation of the Heart

I may bring tears to this process —
it doesn’t mean I don’t want to be here,
doesn’t mean I don’t want to be cleansed

I may bring tears —
it doesn’t mean I’m sad —
they are, I guess, a way that I surrender,
a way that I acknowledge
I can’t do this alone,
nor even know the “this” I should be doing

Prepare my soil —
banish the traffickers of worldly ways,
break up the rocks, dissolve the thorns,
prepare my soul,
and I’ll be here to water your sweet seed.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 10, 2019

Weightless

And if we know
nothing we do
holds any weight,
we won’t try to sit down
on our achievements
and we won’t fall through them
wondering, as we fall
what happened — why
we weren’t supported

If we recognize
we are held up by our breath —
all we take in, all we give out,
all we see as true, and honor —
we will move lightly through the day
unmired by past or future,
nimble in the turnings of the moment.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 8, 2019

Patience

Patience moves through layers like breath,
giving each its needed round,
patience lets the frenzy settle
and begins again

There is time, there is time,
there is time for each idea to form,
to reach its fullness,
to let the circle close

There is a firmness that holds
the wind ruffled page,
that smoothes it out
and lets it turn in turn

So may my hands smooth
the tangled, rumpled tasks
so they can lie flat
along the day.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 2, 2019