Present Spirit

I look out through the rain
to see the way
that things are here,
to feel the exclamation of their presence –
each leaf, each cell, comprised of an intelligence
that fractal-spirals deep, the more I look

This tree, still young by estimation
of others, between whom it rises –
the aspiration of its yearly growth,
the buds that punctuate its branch tips

This tree, though one of many others,
can be enough to show me present Spirit,
of which everything is made,
in which everything exists.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 23, 2020

Meaning

With infinite patience
I’m brought round again
to learn the new meanings
which are the old meanings
from before the world began

I will learn them
here in the calm of late afternoon,
here in the rain washed, sun graced moments
when the turkeys wander back
from across the field
and crickets sing softly
and grasshoppers click

This isn’t something
I could ever learn alone,
and the great wonder is,
I don’t have to.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 19, 2019

In the midst

And if I ask myself
the reason for my joy,
I may consider how we breathe beauty
in sight and scent and sound,
and how we work humble —
ready to serve and learn,
and how in all this
(constant as cricket song)
we are borne up
by the presence we’re coming to recognize
as our own,
as it is given us
in the midst of every day.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 12, 2019

A New Day

Day dawns,
rain gone
(if for a moment)
sun flirts with wind,
clouds glint and grin

We free a dove
that trapped itself
in our young cherry tree’s enclosure,
I try the spirits
and today it’s clearer
whence they hail

These things do not depend
on weather, or on any gods
society has shaped and propped up,
they don’t depend on how we felt
or what we said and did

It is the Spirit
that sustains us,
breathing what we are
into our consciousness,
planting the clarity of our cause
into our frames.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 10, 2019

The Facts of Soul

When I came back today
it was still there, where I saw it
yesterday — the house
in its perfection, all the laws of it
standing, in their interlock,
in their prismatic color,
in the certainty of completion,
every vector blessing

I was glad to see it —
interested that I hadn’t known before
that it was here all the time,
delighted to consider
what it will offer us
and what we will give it
in these Soul ordered days.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 16, 2019

Your Spirit Today

The trees give shady respite —
I see their gentle breathing
in the rise and fall of limbs —
they are at peace with wind,
with Spirit

You are like that today —
in the calm of your demeanor
I feel the day breathing,
your spirit a balm against the work,
your steady motion
bearing us forward
along the course that we are learning
not to plan so much as ride,
not to engineer so much as live.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 27, 2019

Full

The day fills up with
the bobbing of grass shafts,
their heads identifying
distinct natures
above the blades

The day fills up with
winds that rise and fall
and the clicks and tocks of ravens
and the crystal-colored calls
of blackbirds

The day is full of
the presence of Spirit
rising up through everything,
causing and being everything,
each seed head and foot fall,
each breath, each perception,
each grace.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 19, 2019

Flow

The river calls its tributaries —
they are drawn to the flow —
all water follows
by virtue of what it is

Of water moved by Spirit
we are formed, we are born,
we are borne along the course prepared

Of water and of Spirit
we find ourselves
new as this breath,
steady as the presence of the infinite.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 7, 2019