Tag Archives: poetry

My Poetry

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Edward paces

I wanted to tell you this morning
that each time I write a poem
with you in it,
each time you have shared
what was in my heart,
in my mind,
you are more present
in the landscape of my being,
in the circuit of my thoughts

When you receive my poems
you have received a gift of me
so that I hold you
in gratitude, in inner company —
I keep the thought of you
as treasure,
more for every time
that, through my poetry,
I feel I have been seen.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 22, 2015

Picking Raspberries

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raspberries2

Picking raspberries, I consider
that writing poems is just like this sometimes —
There’s sight involved, but picking
comes down to touch most often —
a gentle grasp that doesn’t bruise the berries,
just firm enough to pull them off,
and knowing to desist if they resist too much,
to wait another day until they ripen

I stoop down to peer beneath the leaves
and spot the hanging red,
then my hand goes in almost blind
to feel if it is ready and to pick it if it is.
Some berries fall apart in my hand,
some years, some are mushy
(but not this crop)
We’ll tend them well to keep them plump

With poems I do the same thing,
with the initial spark, with words,
with images —
I move focused along the canes
and fill my basket.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 15, 2015

Night Daze

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Tonight the crickets’ chorus
sets an undulating braid,
The sound of fireworks punches through it —
staccato pops and cracks, keening whistles —
I’m not sure what they’re celebrating.
Tomorrow I go home

I dreamt of writing
in a pre-poem nap
but when I woke up
it was gone
There’s nothing in my sun-soaked head
but sleep.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 30, 2014

Thanks

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MacKenzie2a

Yes, we see each other

The signal that I sent across the years
(which, since it met with no response,
I’d left,
continuing to work
because I needed to,
slowly gaining prowess on my own)

Has now come back
at the right time.
Light recognizes light,
Honest dedicated effort
sees the same
And so we start to forge a higher discourse
Where we redeem the purpose of our being

So I say thanks —
Thanks for how you live your life,
thanks for what you see
thanks for the clarity
that frames your thoughts,
thanks for seeing me
Thanks for attention, instead of norms,
Thanks for the dance within the meta-forms.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 19, 2014

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


Daily Poems

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Every day has a poem in it
— That little girl starting to run,
short-stringed kite two feet above her head
Her mom, walking behind her, smiling
(colors: pink, purple, red)
— That man on racing bike,
his smile denoting deep contentment —
Each of these are poems
though only briefly intersected here

Clouds dance along horizon
reminding me there’s more
than the smell of tar,
the roar of motors;
There are
Echo tunnels on the trail,
A chalk-drawn paean to Love
(now almost washed away)
And a delighted Downs boy with a dog

The sun begins to cook the day under the overcast
The coolness sighs and looks for places to lie down
The wind bears thistle fluff along
and sets it in the river
Small girls with their grandma play around

Every day has a poem in it
I only need to dip my head in
like these ducks
Reach beneath the surface,
Pull it up.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 8, 2012


An empty page

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Perhaps it is a time for breathing in
Breathing in, taking in
Listening instead of saying
Having nothing to convey
Ingesting rather than creating
Letting rushing showers of stories
fall across my vision
Hearing all the sounds
and making no decision
Let the magic coalesce at other sources
Let the message be sent out
by other voices
This yawning blankness of my mind
may well be for the best
Every field, including mine
must have its time of rest.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 29, 2012


Processing

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How will you remember these —
Swing of hammock, song of trees
Blanket filling in where sun has ceased?
Wounded thoughts that need to be released . . .

Every day I send these bobbing forth
Always with earnest hope that some will see
Encapsulated, bottled, swiftly corked
Love notes to my community

There is no string to bring me with them
I can’t expect them to be met, I know
They must be free if I’m to truly give them
I send them out, and I stay here, alone

The sun is sitting in the tops of trees
The wind, affectionate, still musses up their leaves
The afternoon slides on towards evening hours
Punctuated by suburban crows and cars

Evening evens everything
Draws together trees and sky
As here and there become the same,
Things that were distant softly unify

How will you remember this?
You’ll wrap it in the evening scents and sounds
You’ll bring your peace to reign, and here is how:
You’ll set your steady anchor in the now.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 13, 2012



Politics and Poetry

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Yesterday had strange lights in it.  I sat with a group of homeless women and wrote about peace, and heard poignant tales of trauma and redemption.  I read about Libya, Yemen, and Bahrain.  I finished a poem about a vision I saw, nearing sleep.  Today I read some poetry online (looking into taking a class, trying to find the right teacher) and found much that was foreign to me.  And I read about a group of young people from Serbia who are teaching people how to successfully bring down dictators.  http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/16/revolution_u?page=0,1
Which engendered the following:
Political Conversion:
     Ode to CANVAS
What wins? Can empires truly crumble?
Can decades of oppression be brought down?
Perhaps they can, with methods wise and humble
the youth from Serbia have worked to spread around.
They look around and find the power areas – 
the forces to win over to their side,
In Egypt’s case, police and military,
their land as one, a people unified.
They build for years, with quiet, small successes
They grow their movement almost secretly
till when they stand, their voice can’t be suppressed:
The people claim their courage and are free.
Such wonder! That these dedicated youth
Are proving to us all the power of truth.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 22, 2011
Poetical Confusion
Some call it poetry when words are snatched
from multi-tasked attention – meaning hatched
perhaps as afterthought, upon observing
juxtapositions of their random pennings.
It may be so for them, but as for me
I crave a higher sensibility
I want to be transported by a poem
made to see and feel in ways I haven’t 
beyond the market’s dull, bombarding drone
the drift of mindless clutter on the planet
I don’t believe we can’t discern what’s true
that anything that flits through thought will do.
The culture speeds at furious velocity
I still hold out for luminosity.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 22, 2011


What is Poetry?

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My sister and I were talking about communication, and how difficult words sometimes are.  They have their different meanings and connotations to different people, they have their ruts – phrases they stubbornly stick to, huge concepts and their antitheses that suddenly slide into people’s thought with a word or phrase that you use, till at some point you realize that, with the set of words you share, there’s no way of making yourself understood.  And my sister said, “perhaps poetry is the only place where words can be unchained.”  Which I thought was interesting – probably true even though in poetry the words are more constrained (and yes, I noticed the rhyme in my thought.)
Janice asked me yesterday, “What is poetry?” because I had told her about my new blog and she’s taking a poetry course.  I said it’s a good question.
I think one aspect of poetry is an agreement that the writer and the reader  make to unchain the words from their usual associations, to be open to new ones.  Sometimes the constraints of form – rhyme and meter, size and shape – divert the thought from more prosaic meanings so that the urgent questions – How does this make sense? Do I agree with it? – can be put aside.  New questions can be considered: How does this touch me? How does it sing?  
Both poetry and prose can share the admonition:  say exactly what you mean – don’t add words to be impressive, flowery, rhythmic or rhyming.  Don’t leave things out because you don’t know an easy way to say them.  The meaning is the gravity. The words are the water.  They fall down over the constraints of form in the most vertical route, at each moment, toward the sea.  The poetry or prose is the river that results.
I tried to write a poem this week about a walk I had with my friend Becca.  But following my own criteria, I had to admit that it didn’t pass.  So instead of sharing it, I will share a very bad sonnet about the process, from my “sonnet a day” collection:
Failing at Poetry
I tried too hard to write a poem today
Saturday, too, and it would not emerge
My urgency to post got in the way
Of needed clear-eyed dumping of the verse
Some images I liked – they sounded true
Some rhythms and some rhymes lined up quite nicely
But others lurched, and certain lines were trite
And I didn’t get the mood precisely
So though I wrote a clearly stated blurb
On what makes poetry and prose be good
To follow with that poem would be absurd
Would mock the truth of everything I said
I need to find the truth within a poem
Or I won’t find the words to bring it home.


©Wendy Mulhern
January 25, 2011