Tag Archives: relationship

Sight shift

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Your presence compels my steady attention.
I take a half step back from myself
to align with the sensing
of what you are,
this cause of me, this Principle,
that which my full being must express,
here for me with all its surging prospects

I notice the iridescence
at the name of you, the name of me,
the place where what I am
is wholly redefined by you,
who, after all, defined me in the first place.

I need to learn to keep this promise,
to keep on knowing you,
knowing myself, this way.
I need to stay with you
and know you with me, too.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 10, 2023

Relation

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You, too, may be delivered
into the calm, into the certainty
of abiding peace. This place where
no storms, threatened or in full rage,
can even come close to you.
This because you have found relationship
that stretches you full out
in the experience of life,
which, when awakened,
makes every storm seem small

Anything, any living thing,
can bring you there.
You will have sure access to it
when you bring others.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 25, 2023

Working in November

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That we can work together
through rain,
that we can be cheerful
as puddles form
and gloves get wet
gives me a chortle,
a bright warming,
an inner heat source
to counteract my dampened clothes

We kept on working
while the rain came harder,
and then it stopped, and we continued,
the appreciation that we had
each for the other
as strong a structure as the frame we built.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 3, 2020

Something like that

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(from the biking philosophers’ notebook)

I wouldn’t want a tame bird,
she said. Wild birds
have so much life. They don’t
need our bread

Still, a wild bird
could take you somewhere,
in the trill of song,
the dip and dart of wing

You could have a relationship
with the badlands. They could
take your breath away
in the way they pull the light
like it was a silk scarf
or a skein of time
stretched and altered,
rendered otherworldly

You could find a related essence
in a baby’s smile, in the flash
of that moment where you shared
a recognition of each other’s souls,
your unplumbed depth,
or a mutual acceptance
that lets you both stay wild
in some elemental way,
elixir of living,
life breath of day.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 1, 2020

Recognition

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We will know more of each other
as we meet in Spirit,
more of our hearts, more of our sparks,
more of our flights, our home, our satisfaction

We will know more of the land, too —
what it needs, what it gives,
who it shelters

All things grow richer as we’re rarified,
as we shift our cause/effect allegiance
to where our source lies.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 4, 2019

Leaning

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This can be a space of
leaning into you,
of being quiet,
taking our tone
from the softness of the day,
its cloudiness, mist hanging
in the trees,
evening seeming to come sooner

Feelings can rise like mist
and sit in mind
like low clouds —
we won’t do anything about them
except lean in for comfort,
lean in for support.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 1, 2019

Sparkle

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Within the sparkle of your being,
between the separate sparkles,
I thought for a moment
I could enter. Could feel the crackle
of electric movement, effervescence
of the spaces in between —
Could step beyond boundaries
to where we occupy
the same space. A way to light up,
a way to receive.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 30, 2019

For Ethan

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(with all best wishes)

If all of this is energy
and all of it is interactive,
then everything from that leaf
to this train, to the flickers of lights
between eyes
can span together
(cat’s cradles in the mind, new geometries
from interlaced connections)

And you can’t really call it risk
to put your all
into what calls you,
put your hand on the core of
what will draw from you
the spark of increase

Splendid views flash
between the cars of passing trains
and we are all on an adventure,
we are all going deeper
into the heart of awakening.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 26, 2018

Building

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This work is changing us.
We are tacked and tapped
and jostled and nestled,
whacked and wrestled
into a closer fit

This joinery, of old called harmony,
will make of us a sturdy structure.
What we build upon it — ah,
that is unfolding day by day,
in rhythm and in dreams,
in understanding and in laughter.
Maybe someday
we’ll have time to see it.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 7, 2018

The Costume Room

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In the costume room
there were many choices —
things to put on you, things to put on me,
faces, masks, and characters,
roles and stories

In the costume room, we know
all these things were put on
and thus could sense that also
we could take them off

Here in the mirror world
it’s not so clear
what I project on you,
what’s really there —
we could be completely different people
in each other’s plays,
not even knowing it
and thus surprised
by all the things we see each other do.
Has it ever seemed that way to you?

©Wendy Mulhern
February 11, 2018