It didn’t take changing you,
it only took knowing you,
discerning which of the signals
refracted between us
were actually true,
and which were interlayered shadows
between projection and perception,
not needing to provoke or be responded to
It only took
holding a steady vision
of that which has always loved you –
letting that be my lens,
making my focus clear.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 17, 2020
Behind the wisps of sorrow
that came drifting up
from memories released
by an offhand reminder
Behind my being sorry
for being too inept
to offer you the wisdom
that you looked for,
behind the sense
that I had let you down
Comes, like the light that prompts the mist to lift,
to float above the ground before dispersing,
the fact that love was, even then,
the only force impelling me,
the only message I could give
and all that you could really hear
And love, I know, can do no harm,
and nothing I advised,
could interfere with who you are
and how you shine,
could hold you back from coming to your own.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 2, 2020
I find myself holding
a hopeful, awkward affection
for people I have never met
whom I may meet someday
Imagination can’t provide me words,
but I imagine listening,
hoping I will catch the cues,
and hoping, too, for lenience –
forgiveness for the things I fail to see
We get a moment’s intersection
where it’s possible
that we could find
a treasured understanding.
This I hope for, but I note
that we could also miss
For my part, I will hold my doors open,
my thoughts focused towards you
and not towards me,
I’ll trust that I’ll be guided
to the right words and perceptions
to see you as you most hope to be seen.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 8, 2020
This slow lesson
I seem to have to learn
so many times –
should be a simple thing,
and so it is, extremely so –
the lesson of the One
No being right for me
if it’s a wrong for someone else,
no inner constructs
dividing me from others,
no chambers in my house
kept dark by unkind thoughts,
nothing in myself that I deny
One truth to hold my threads together
One light to shine all the way through
One law to clarify all my perceptions
till I’m transparent, till I’m shone anew.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 16, 2020
This may seem infinitely different
but it is all the same,
the binding loops of fear
are not distinct, there is no
relative virtue in the systems
that hold us down — one pathology
is just as haunting
as another
We can find comfort, then, perhaps,
in what we share,
stop putting ourselves down,
forgive each other,
and in the space that makes,
we’ll come to see
it is the same release
that frees us all.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 7, 2020
There are so many ways to fall,
so many things to grasp
that just can’t hold you,
so much drama
at how things unravel,
or sag, or crash, or splinter
There are so many songs
that detail how the thing went down,
how it spiraled, how it flailed,
how it sank
We feel the pathos,
for who of us has not fallen,
who of us has not known
the stomach drop, the swift slide,
the quicksand’s implacable suck?
It isn’t known, as much,
what happens after —
the nature of the place where finally,
we land. If people knew of that,
maybe they’d sing of it more often —
the core of gravitas awaiting there.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 28, 2020
At the delicious edge of sleep —
the doors of dream enticingly ajar
(or maybe they are more like pools
or limbs exploring towards infinity)
From that alluring edge
I’m reeled back in —
your voice, or at another time
your finger tapping —
engendering my dull reluctant rise
through layers swiftly shredding
back to here
And so my softest thing to do
is laugh —
it shimmers with releasing ripples,
keeps my thought from coalescing solid,
allows my sleepy drift
back toward the edge …
©Wendy Mulhern
December 26, 2019
You: What are you thinking about?
Me: Same thing I always —
You: Oh, God …
Me: That’s exactly right
You: And me, I’m thinking about
what I always think about, too …
(a pause, we snuggle in)
…the house — how to build it,
what to do next
The wonder of it is
that we can come together,
or almost — good enough
to keep the project going
day after week after year.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 17, 2019
I say no to this cat
but she proves I’m not serious,
pushing her way nose first
into my lap,
waving her tail in my face
We compromise —
she gets to stay here
if she sits still,
if she lets me write
As for the mind of cats —
she must think it very strange,
all the little things I find
to busy myself — pointless things,
when I could be affording her a lap,
reveling in mammal warmth,
feeling the sunshine
There is a place
for butterscotch fur
and a tail that waves just so,
and a secret hunting side
to keep sheathed,
except for a touch of needle claws
against my thighs.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 12, 2019
The rain has given us a break —
we work in silence,
finding it more harmonious
than the questions and projections
that would otherwise fill up the space
No need to annoy each other,
no need to talk about the things we cannot know.
After the window closes,
we’ll do the next thing that makes sense,
taking in the necessary factors
that will reveal themselves by then.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 16, 2019