We will not speak of sparks,
since wildfires are so fearsome,
yet we find connection spreading,
often along unexpected lines,
and one or another thing
can be what calls us all together
A small all, perhaps, at first,
but enough to make a we,
and we are powerful,
however few we seem to be –
the courage of the plural
overcoming isolation –
our first necessary taste
of being free.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 17, 2022
My highest truth
can burn through all the stories,
the well-meaning, the self-justifying,
sounds like what I think someone
would like to hear
stories
It’s fine if that leaves me
with nothing to say –
others have important truths to tell,
and this can be my time
to listen.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 11, 2020
I’m thinking that
we’re not getting out of this
the way we got in –
reaching blindly for
who we thought were leaders,
more and more divided
by who we trust to tell the truth
There certainly is a role
for the long road,
the honest bumping
along all the facts on the ground,
there is a role for perseverance
and for knowing something as it really feels
day by day
But there’s also a role for rising,
where consciousness sifts through the tales
and finds a resolution
in the place that hums
with the life that is never divided
nor invaded, nor conquered,
where norms dissolve
but truth and love remain.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 3,.2020
From the clear-eyed stillness
you can watch
while the whole mechanism
grinds out its tales,
ever more colossal in its efforts
to manipulate
You can see what they want.
And you can see how lost
they must be, to think they want that
You can watch them set their snare
and know you won’t step in,
and you can see that finally
all it can bring down
is its own lopsided structure
Down with a crash
that will only result
in showing forth the light,
as, ultimately, everything does.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 3, 2020
Take back this costume,
take back this mask –
I don’t want to play the oppressor
anymore
Take back these petty thoughts,
these grudging,.measuring thoughts –
I refuse to play along,
being a pawn,
my steps bedogged
by haunted looks to right and left,
hounds of rejection nipping at my heels
Let me evict the oppressor’s hand
from all my views, from all my actions,
let me step forth humbly
to take the brave hand
of those who, day by day,
throw off projections marking them oppressed,
showing me, as well,
how to get free.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 27, 2020
The world convulses.
This isn’t the first time a great idea
has lit up the people,
isn’t the first time a simple truth
has sat with dawn-fresh clarity
in people’s minds
That which for centuries
has called itself power
will plan, as ever, to sweep it away
with no thought at all
that there’s any spark
its bluster and trickery
can’t blow out
I will wait quiet.
I will hold this coal,
fuel it with my heart,
I will cherish the thought
that truth must win.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 15, 2020
My challenge: to not be polarized,
my challenge – to not be right.
However easy it may seem,
how smooth the path along that route,
it never has delivered me
to the new place, the place
I long to go
My challenge: not to polarize.
So vastly better to be silent
than speak the worn out words
defining tribe
Mine is not a happy tribe to have come from –
the tribe of right (more oily and insidious
than the tribe of white,
which I may righteously deplore)
My task – dip seven times in Jordan,
learn the river’s lessons,
come out clean.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 2, 2020
Stand for truth.
A partial truth will not save us –
partial truth is another term
for untruth
Yet we come with these fragments,
don’t know the whole story
(trained all our lives in our blindnesses
so we can’t see them)
We will be fragmented
until we insist on oneness,
which will feel at times
like tearing ourselves apart
so we can let partitions be deconstructed
so we can’t cordon ourselves off
from the darkness
So we can stand
and let the light
shine through everything,
washing us clean,
showing the whole truth
and setting things right.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 1, 2020
You can’t put weight on what’s falling,
can’t stomp your foot, can’t hope
to knock the bottom out and so fall through —
there’s no salvation in destruction
however much you’re longing
for some easier way to get out
And yet …
And yet …
Every honest step, every searching step,
every anguished and exhausted step,
regardless of directionality
will take you closer
to the amnesty you seek
We live in the field of absolute value
where you can’t take a negative step —
what’s upside down will be inverted,
what’s right side up will be purified
Don’t worry —
this is not dependent
on your will and prowess,
this is Truth
unfolding effortless in grace.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 20, 2018
I will vote for the strength of being,
vote for the light
and not what covers it,
not what tries to cordon off and own it,
looming large with rules
for how, when, and for whom
it needs to shine
I will vote for the heart’s whisper
within each one of us
which tells us, contradicting roles and rules,
just what we are
We won’t be overthrown
for there is no power
outside the seed within,
no power but that which calls it forth.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 4, 2018