We are marvelous creatures
and our instincts are unerring —
See how we fall like water,
see how we follow the veins of continuity
that still flow through the rubble
of our chopped up lives

See how we leave the lies
that said these broken stones
were natural, that the meaning
of our lives is to collect them,
pile them together
in some kind of race
to be someone with a complete structure

We sink beneath the stones,
We find what flows,
We find what holds together,
We find the land
So we escape to find ourselves
no longer partial,
no longer fractured, disconnected,
no longer severed from ourselves —
So we stretch out in how we know
that we are whole.

©Wendy Mulhern

May 1, 2015

Ah, what have you shouldered?
— Put it down —
What have you swallowed?
— Spit it out —

At this time of heaviness,
in this time of lies,
In the face of revolution
or worse, suffocation
The one thing that is needed
is not for you to go down
(though the depths cry out, cry out,
though something calling itself conscience
demands your howling)

The one thing that is needed
is for you to demonstrate
(if only to yourself)
the survival move of shrugging off the weight
and letting the afflatus
bear you to the surface,
letting the stillness
radiate,
letting your truth
rise.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 28, 2015

Only so much time
can be spent in shock
though waves and afterwaves
of revelation
keep sending their tremors
roiling and insistent
throughout the startled landscape
of my consciousness

Only so much time
can be given
to parsing out the network
of the old lies —
how they snared us
is far less relevant
that what we need to do
and how we can,
and how we follow the imperative
to rise.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 29, 2015