It stops being a thing you are trying to do.
It becomes a present fact,
the sun touched moment
a reveal of something timeless,
something always –
the truth of now’s perfection
enduring through eternity,
and you realize
you never need to leave.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 4, 2023
It’s not that we stop spinning,
curling in the currents,
spiraling along their lines
unseen, by us unknown
Nor that we gain the viewpoint
to see the movement from above,
predict, or orchestrate,
or even sing along
This peace, instead,
comes from the inner balance,
the focus of the moment
and the joy of presence,
so instead of being swept,
we ride the swirls,
and own the place we are
and what we give.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 23, 2023
It’s magical outside – mist and moonrise
and the last blue before the final dark.
Snow has chased through the day
but it is gone now – the kiss of cold remains
but that is all
It’s magical inside – the windows
show the same last blue,
and the reflections from our lights and fire
It’s just a way of feeling about it,
a way that gathers warmth,
and gathers presence,
and peace that deepens
in the rounded shadows of the years.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 5, 2023
What is it all made of? –
these thoughts, these colors,
this shimmer of wind-touched trees and water,
these family ties,
presence of others I feel,
like air through my fingers while riding no-handed
after they’ve gone –
a latch remains open
and a door swings somewhere in my mind.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 28, 2022
Let me remember
to come here every day,
here where the morning air
breathes you alive
and your smile reflects
my exuberance
Let me remember
this here is available
wherever we are,
wherever the bright fact of Life
fills up all the space.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 21, 2022
I think of meeting you hereafter
(though hereafter’s not a time that I believe in)
I ask myself:
in my regimen where only now exists,
is there a place, a state, where we can meet again?
I consider:
what rare and rich awareness
can encompass fully all of me and you –
a way more solid than imagination
where you can truly tell me what is new?
It seems far off, but also within reach
along this journey of my steady climbing –
I can prepare myself by being
always more of who I am
and seeing clearly
who you’ve always been.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 17, 2022
My mind is written through today
with double lines, as when you write
with broken chalk, where two edges
touch down at once,
my words over my words,
my thoughts looped back,
noticing the echoes
I don’t want to do it often –
it has a graying effect,
like much-used blackboards,
or like checking my phone
far too many times
The afternoon is not like that –
each sun-touched fir and fern
floods itself with presence –
no thoughts of past or checking for the future,
taking in each golden ray of now.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 1, 2021
I consider going, like a disciple,
carrying nothing, preparing to see,
like water from rock in the wilderness,
all that I need
blooming up in the moment
of my offering,
of my service
I imagine being caught up in connection,
the igniting joy arising from contact,
the bounty at the spark of it,
the clarity of knowing
there is no other day
better than this,
no moment worthy of dismissal
The match strike lights
the former emptiness
and everything is here.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 13, 2020
We live in the eternal now
and nothing else can touch us –
no troubled echoes from the past,
no fears of future outcomes
Here in the eternal now
we are fresh each moment,
and all the resources of now
are present for our use
In the eternal now,
there can be no sore spot,
no place rubbed raw, no pain
from previous exertion
No troubled memories,
no shell-shocked caution,
nothing cordoned off as minefield.
So we can thrive, forever safe
in the eternal now.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 31, 2020
Today I think of presence
not as something with me,
but as the very fact of my existence
Wonder it is that I see,
that I breathe, and that I have,
before all that, the great desire of being,
the hope, the love, all that waits
before the me I call myself arises
to greet the morning – all that cares so deeply
about something before what I define
as daily life –
I call it presence.
I step back into it
and go out with peace.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 27, 2020