Tag Archives: philosophy

Visiting hour, King County Jail

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None of these restraints are what they seem:
Though we may feel the structure is
the walls and doors, the iron and the glass,
the heavy locks,
They only are projections of the barriers inside —
The layers upon layers of revoked permissions
set down since toddlerhood,
And the narrow mazes of propriety
inculcated through all our years of school,
Reared up here as final ultimatum:
Stay in the lines, or you will crash, hard, here.

But none of these structures
are what they seem.
Such a surprise to see the guards,
The sentinels of good-defined-by-evil,
Jealous keepers of prescribed morality
Receiving our sweet, wilting, proffered flowers
and stepping over
to our side.

The power of the truth within,
The still, small voice of liberty
Autopoiesis of each living thing
Must overcome these walls and set us free.
Yes, we will pray.
That’s where we must begin.
Against these odds
it is the only way to win.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 12, 2013


Focusing

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This realigning of what matters
is like a massive shift in focus
in which vertical lines
trade places with each other
and what I thought was space between
is coming into view as solid
and what I thought was solid
may turn out to not be anything.

And in my reassessment
I still haven’t found
the rare bird
on which I hoped my lens was trained
but those leaves
in bright and waxy detail
stand out, surreal, 
against surrounding greens.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 10, 2013


On Mortality: Four Observations

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I.
“It’s all over now, baby blue.”
In the buckling of the sky
(blue, almost serene, beyond my windshield,
Turned, in my mind’s eye
by the lyrics of a song)
I felt how creatures die
in the final overwhelm
that overcomes
the desperate, rising impulse
of life plunged into struggle.
They shut their eyes tight,
They curl up
They let it all go —
A sudden shift in priorities —
It all goes quite easily:
They open their eyes
And it is gone.

II.
Maybe each time we awake,
We die from the dream we were in
All those scenes
So swiftly forgotten
in the insistent brushstrokes
of the day’s reality.
Maybe we have died thousands of times,
or more (he said)
And it is something in our creature memory:
We know what it is.

III.
Against the backdrop of impassive sky
These tragedies roll out,
These cries of anguish,
All this waste, this grief,
The drudgery, the disappointment
And the clamor for relief
Yet we will give our all for life
Until the final moment comes.

IV.
I don’t intend to die today
But if I did
I would be satisfied.
I’ve sown true seeds,
I’ve shared my gift,
I’ve known great love
I have more words
But these could be enough.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 9, 2013


Awakening

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Another layer of dissolving dream
sits like mist a little distant from my eyes
I peer to see the sun — pale disk,
emerging
Asserting its dominion on the day

The mist, dispersing, opens out my vision
The ground, now oddly solid
sends its message through my soles:
This is the earth on which you have been walking
This is the contact that will find you whole

I realize that I’d wondered why, while grasping
at all those things, I never really held one
Or why in running towards those goals
I never reached them,
Why the teachers’ lessons
Felt confusing, hopeless, boring
Why I always plodded
When I felt I should be soaring —
Now I know.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 6, 2013


Pontifications

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They had been taught to think
the truth was
an observable entity
that stood between them,
and one or another of them
could be more right
about what it was.

They were willing to allow
the actual truth might be subjective —
Her truth and his, mine and yours —
Colors and perspectives altered
by our points of view.

They didn’t know
that truth is not an object at all
but is a chord of harmony
that comes into tune
like a radio wave
and becomes the whole sound
and renders all vision one.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 27, 2013


If everything is made of thought

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If everything is made of thought
Then there are no separate things
No rolly, clunky, cluttery things
No inscrutable, intractable things
Nothing to fall out of place
Nothing to fail to move

If everything is made of thought
Then there is no past, no gaping track
where things tore through the fabric
of our hopes and plans
leaving shreds along the course of time
No regrets and no alarm
No irreparable harm

If everything is made of thought
Then all these things
we think are non-negotiable —
the way things are, the way they have to be —
can really change, in any instant
Blink of an eye, awakening from dream.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 28, 2012


Special Announcement

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My first collection of poems is out and available for purchase online at Amazon and CreateSpace! 


I think you’ll enjoy the collection — the arc of the message through the poems and the startlingly synergistic art from Mellissae Lucia.  We’d love to see this book reach everyone who might find it inspiring.  If you’d be willing to review it on Amazon, that would help us a lot.  Thanks for your support.

And now for tonight’s poem:

Implicate Order

Every hidden thing
will find its way to surface
in the folding and refolding
of the necessary permutations

All the patterns possible in each design
must lay their sequences 
along the dance of time
It isn’t destiny unrolling
in a rigid line
It’s more the complex undulations of a plane
wherein no signal, however small, is lost
Though it may seem confused, distorted, tossed
by all the other waves that intersect
Each thing that is
will have its full effect.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 29, 2012


Growing New

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We made the choice
And where we could have called ourselves
Bundles of opinions
Past experiences, scars
Perspectives narrowed 
through the jarring course of years
Piles of restrictions growing larger daily
Needing soft accommodation for their weight

Instead we have decided on this:
To serve whatever is alive in us
To always focus on what’s growing
Leaving, rigorously, everything that’s dead behind —
opinions, patterns, prejudice —
And learning, every day
to be more supple

Should it then come as a surprise
to see our love so shining?
So new, so eager, so alive —
with grace and bliss entwining.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 22, 2012


Hope for the World

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(From the biking philosophers’ notebook)

If the world is separate from us,
All its systems
waltzing madly onward
toward our doom,
And we have no reign, no reins —
If someone else has made these bad decisions
And we, as pawns, must pay
in servitude and stress
There is no hope

But if we dream the world
in our sleep and in our aspirations
And if the world is breathed into its being
by our collective breath
And by our inspiration
Then nothing that we see exists outside ourselves
And as we heal ourselves
we’ll breathe it whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 1, 2012


Destiny

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It is no miracle
for Life to put us each
in our perfect place
For grand improbabilities of events
to make us converge
at the right site
and the right time
in the right readiness
to be the perfect gifts
for each other
It is as simple and steady
as the great breathing in and breathing out
of days, of tides
of heat that rises and falls
and vapors that return as rivers
to the sea

All these things accord with Life’s intent
to manifest itself, and so it does —
Our harmony insured
by what Life is:
Its fiat forms the worlds
and also us.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 22, 2012