Tag Archives: revolution

Truth Rising

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dawn truth

Truth rising like dawn
starts to reveal your form —
things you weren’t sure were part of you
start to stand out, you glimpse
the clarity of your imperative

And you discern
that you can never settle
for store-bought explanations
of what you are,
you can never settle for a life
that falls in a conforming line,
you can’t ignore integrity

What might have seemed
like just a few small harms
(not your concern, dictated, as they are,
by factors outside your control)
become abhorrent, become impossible

You see that you are all good,
and nothing else has any rights to your expression.
You see that standing up for this
is what you have to do.
No tallying of consequences.
The truth has risen.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 3, 2016

Voice

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purple magnolia

We stand
startled at the sound
of our voices,
not having heard them
in so long,
lulled and cowed and simply worn down
by the loud drone constantly imposed,
passed off as our own,
asserting its message
of fear and division
all through the day and the night

Now we have spoken
and it’s wonderful how the sound
hums in our throats, in our bones,
how we find we have more to say,
how good it feels when others
resonate, corroborate.
So we stand together,
learning how to hear,
learning to be heard.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 26, 2016

Growing Pains

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Innis Arden walk

Learning to be real
is hard work sometimes,
as I remind myself
from my cozy living room
where I didn’t lift a finger
to make the lights come on,
to make it warm

You wouldn’t know
I’m struggling for my life,
struggling to connect
my causes and effects,
to find a way to know
that what I do has value,
to find a way to deal fairly
with all the beings
with whom I interact,
with everyone on whom my life depends.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 12, 2016

Escape to Reality

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Wendy walking

Here I find myself
walking through the set again,
asking myself, how and when
can I get myself to someplace real?

— Where, when I ask,
What is my role? Whose lives
does my livelihood support? —
I’ll feel the ground
beneath the answer,
the solid good
of my days,
and how it nurtures others,
I’ll taste the sustenance
in that support

And then I ask myself,
Are not the lines of light here?
Don’t I have power, right now,
in kindness I may extend,
in how I see people true?
Is not deliverance
in having no excuses,
Is not the ground I seek
in every heart?

©Wendy Mulhern
February 22, 2016

Breaking Through

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up at winter trees

You have permission
right now
to leave behind your paper life,
your paper and cardboard life,
your brittle or sodden life
with its sad messes
of glue and peeling paint

You have permission to embrace
that thumping and insistent life
that shakes the old foundations
and breaks through

You never were beholden
to the protocol
of all those stiff facades.
Your roots cleave to the earth’s core
and your branches —
your branches clasp the sky.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 8. 2016

Awake

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Jamaica Plain

Across the street,
I see an upper window,
across the day a light,
a leap of concord,
a resonance of consciousness,
a sense of presence,
signal of life, though no one can be seen

Within each dwelling, everywhere I look,
I feel the power,
for any one of us can transform everything.
The calm insistence on the truth
of our infinity
blows out the whole illusion
of our chains.

I see you, indeed I see you!
The great wakening is here
and we will move, astonished,
from the cruel story
into the clear.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 26, 2016

No Lie

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looking north

Don’t be overwhelmed
by the size of the lie,
how comprehensive it has been,
how many generations
it has taken in

Far more impressive
is the size of truth,
and its solidity, and its
dependability,
and the fact that,
right now, it is establishing itself
and we are seeing
the lie falling away,
all of it —

It all must go,
and its purported consequences
can leave no mark
on the grand display of being,
never bring one light
down from the sky.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 25, 2016

Rags

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Richmond beach driftwood

In this threadbare place
where I can no longer settle
for the flimsy garments
of my past, fake life,
for the oppressive garb
of my appointed station

Where I have yet to find
the robes of power and of justice
(though I have dreamed them
oh so many times)
I stand in rags
but not for long

The force that makes me,
that places me at rest,
possessing a prodigious energy
I’ve yet to tap,
that gives me everything I’ve ever been
and all I am to be,
that grants deep decency to all,
will clothe me, too.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 21, 2016

To a woman at Fred Meyer’s

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Discovery tree and sun path

You are not your shopping cart
nor the objects in it,
nor the course it rolls on the ground
with its creaky clumsiness

You are not the tracks through your life
that bring you here
to the bright lights
and the high aisles
with their choices of nothingness

You are not the cage-like strictures
for which you make up your face
and hair, and clothing,
you are not the brittle, limited options
of what to be in this world

You are amazing.
And you are sovereign —
In your being
is the understanding
of how to walk free,
in your hands
the limitless richness
that comes from your source,
the infinite power to bless,
the simple end
to this atrocious farce,
the dynamo inherent in
I Am.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 11, 2016

Days to Come

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wisteria, wire

In my dream we were walking
to the city — hundreds of thousands
of us, freeways full of us.
There were clouds of black smoke, too,
and sirens,
and trying to get across roadway barriers

And we were all helping each other,
moving with urgency,
moving to stand up for some imperative
(I don’t know if I knew what)

In my dream we were fearless,
for our unity was awesome.
May we be so as well
in days to come.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 13, 2015