Tag Archives: relationship

For Edward, Christmas 2011

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The words have been said, many times.

What matters more than words
is the homing
That which keeps us turning
back toward each other—
Some internal balance that is set
for us to always seek to lock together
spin as one—
A part that always searches for
its counterpart.

Home (for me) is where you are
and where we are
when we are one
When we stream together
Lie along each other
plunging down the course of life
like river currents side by side
that race and laugh and dip
and reconnect
Joyous whitewater of reunion.


©Wendy Mulhern
December 24, 2011



Self Soothing

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I.

From the spun out galaxies

They are coming home

The stars they flung in wild abandon
They are bringing back
The canvasses they painted
They have taken down
And if they come back cold
And if they come back tired
And if they come back desolate
Here are arms to hold them
Here is warmth to radiate
Deep enough so they can leave
All the long and fruitless miles
All the hopes that came back empty
Deep enough to let them rest
Till they can gain new life as stories
All of my questers
I let them come back
And that which comforts me
Will integrate us all.

II.
Some of them are asking me
Did we really have to bring back
All the stars?
Maybe we left some out there—
Could that be OK?
What if there are really whole swaths of them
Shining up there with the slender, slender crescent moon
While frost settles gently on rooftops?
And maybe space really is
As big as we mapped it
And maybe you can really have it!
—Hush, children.  Sleep for now.


©Wendy Mulhern
December 22, 2011



Opening

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It wasn’t an obvious change

Not like signal flags strung up a mast

Each letter’s pattern flapping brightly

Not like an avalanche
Taking down half a mountainside
Not like a rite of passage
Attended by ceremony and celebration
Process and resolve, 
Admonition and attention
Just a small door that was there all along 
Now quietly unlocked.


©Wendy Mulhern
December 18, 2011



Distance

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We glided in boxes
Carefully separate
All of our movements
Elaborate jockeying
Choreographed to allow
No touch
Our only signal
The desperate gleam
Of hope for some contact
Through the very words
That kept us apart
And the shy aloofness
Of propriety and habit.
(Habits as old as our parents,
Learned from them, who no doubt
Learned them, not on purpose
From their own)
When all we really wanted
Was the boxes to dissolve
The boxes of manner
The boxes of habit
The boxes of clothes
So we could melt together
And be one.


©Wendy Mulhern
December 17, 2011



Signals: a collage

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Explorer tracks its arc through space
Its lonely bleep a leap of existential faith
A signal it must make without a sign
That anyone has heard or might respond

Vibrations leap and link across the room
Each one homing, each one joining
Structuring a strong deep sphere of sound
Catch our hearts up in their sparkling tones

Kisses call across the plane of skin
Set the signal seeking
Receive an answer rising from within
Dissolve the boundary of who is speaking

Words set out in existential faith
Across the unknown span between the stories
Unsure if they’ll be met on some receiving side
Or if they’ll bleep in lonely fading glory

A light, a note, a kiss, an explanation
Launched by need, held in their arcs by hope
Deep sphere of Love — enclose their circle, hold them
Converge them in your center, show them home.


©Wendy Mulhern
December 2, 2011


Holding

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I passed that point.

Looking back today, I was stunned to see
How I used to hold people
Each one like a book
In which was catalogued
Their character, their strengths and weaknesses
Their relationship to me
A book I could close
And put on a shelf
Where it wouldn’t take up much room.

Now I see each person
As a window to infinity
Opening out to me huge views
In which there’s room
For them to be
And me to see them
And I can’t file them away
They are much too vast
And they make me dance so.


©Wendy Mulhern
November 16, 2011



Storms

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When waves crash
Let me be a deeply rooted rock
Integral to the earth itself
Solid down to the heat
Where magma stirs my feet
With primal warmth
To which I can retreat
Far from the cold and violent froth
And water pooling
Running down and down
Removing from my face
With its persistence
Microcosmic grains to join the sand.
Let my deep heart rise unmoved
To meet the water
Patient, calmly waiting
For this barrage of waves to pass
For sun’s return
As all the moving, living things
Open their small mouths
Receiving what they need
In their right time
At wave’s crash
Or in quiet pooling
Or in pale star shine.


©Wendy Mulhern
October 30, 2011



You might want to know

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In the end
it doesn’t matter
who you thought you were
or why you thought you couldn’t —
Your light outshines the shapes you made 
for it to show through
You dazzle us
which meets your deep design
not engineered by recoil or by intellect
but by an essence
eons older than you think you are
So there
You’ve done it
and the echoes of our shared delight
reverberate in bliss
so now you know
you didn’t need to worry
This is who you’ve always been
This is who you are.


©Wendy Mulhern
October 25, 2011

(Background music: Isaac Shepard, “Lull Goodbye”)

Critical Mass

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It seems to still take a certain mass
or else I am critical
of myself
and my efforts
and my contribution
and I hold back
stay in the shadows
don’t speak out, don’t dance
I’ve heard tell that the instinct
is ancient, animal tribal
a necessary coordination
safeguarding collective survival
the strength and shared warmth of a herd
within which one can feel secure
But I 
my voice so thoroughly revoked
by lack of others
feel more like I have failed myself
have lacked the courage of convictions
let my message fall to silence
before I would be seen to stand alone.


©Wendy Mulhern
October 23, 2011