Tag Archives: story

Sanctuary

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This is a poem I co-wrote with a friend. We alternated lines. Then had just a little tweaking to make it fit together. And brainstormed the title.

Sanctuary

I sing love shapes onto a canvas of stillness.
Slow ripples blend outwards, overlapping
As galaxies of air expand and contract.
We are here! breathing this moment,
Lost in a timeless sanctuary
Found in formless unity,
Emptiness dancing with ineffable being.

Softly, the love shapes of my song return
As if they were the only thing I’d ever seen
and wrap themselves around me like a lullaby —
A warm blanket in winter
of velvet midnight sky.
Higher light dives into mysterious depths
Aurora borealis for my love-struck eyes.

©Chris Capogna and Wendy Mulhern
March 3, 2013


Rededication

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Though I have been distracted
by all these thoughtscapes
with their shifting edges
and their treacherous crevasses —
cliff faces thrust up suddenly,
clefts and foldings that engulf
huge chunks of time —

Though I’ve been distracted by
considerations of relative fortune,
and what is given
and what is owed,
evaluations of trusts and loyalties,
and what’s conjectured
and what is known,

Today I stop,
to let my thought sink down,
steady as a stone,
to its home
where I know 
none of these thoughtscapes ever mattered —
They have no weight, no substance,
no attraction
and they can’t distract me anymore.

Today I dedicate myself again
to the pre-time worth
of everything we are,
the silent eloquence
of every vital heart,
our precious heat,
our unremitting glow.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 1, 2013


Pontifications

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They had been taught to think
the truth was
an observable entity
that stood between them,
and one or another of them
could be more right
about what it was.

They were willing to allow
the actual truth might be subjective —
Her truth and his, mine and yours —
Colors and perspectives altered
by our points of view.

They didn’t know
that truth is not an object at all
but is a chord of harmony
that comes into tune
like a radio wave
and becomes the whole sound
and renders all vision one.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 27, 2013


Walking toward the light

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As we walked toward the light,
The things we were holding
in our hands
began to melt —
Intricacies of dreams,
Specifications,
Things we thought were so important
to convey,
Histories we felt
distinguished and defined us —
Rolling down our fingers —
Bright trailing drips —

We felt the coolness
of air on wet skin,
Swift intake of breath
at the freshness
As we,
Now empty-handed,
Reached our arms
into the glad embrace
of our whole
wild
unrecorded
being.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 27, 2012


Winter Solstice

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On this sphere we celebrate
the slinging of our orbit
‘round the sun
The changes wrought in light and dark
As earth, like dreamers turning
rolls around its center, day by day

Surprising from a star’s perspective
that these recurring changes —
Minute murmurs of balance in a spinning top —
Should make such difference to us
Should stand as symbols for our faltering faith
And its rebirth —

Waverings unseen in star time
Where they wheel grandly
Shining ever steady and unchanged.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 21, 2012


Seeing each other

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We come here in our chosen roles
Whatever we’ve decided to present —
The selves that we’ve assembled to display,
The stories propping up our self-esteem,
Our plans of how we’ll move and what we’ll say

We come here hoping
what we’ve made ourselves to be
will be enough
And that some transformation
will reach us through our tedium of stuff
We seek a blessing
while doubting it is something we deserve
We keep on guessing
what course will make us feel alive, secure

But Ah —
Despite ourselves
(and everything we hoped to hide,
so clearly seen by everyone who’s hiding)
Our precious souls shine through
And these
These souls, so holy
So wholly free from all regimes
that we or others have devised —
Since they are here
There’s nothing else remaining.
Like dust, like ash, like smoke
those old self-constructs blow away
And so we see each other as we are.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 12, 2012


Internal Tapestry

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We begin
with music-indexed memories
Scenes and signs that rise up with the songs
Laid down on their strains
Returning faithfully
every time the song is played

We add
Impressions from the day —
The rain outside,
The cozy orb of home,
Companionship and tasks,
The texture of our efforts 
and the thoughts that group around them

This becomes
another layer on the songs —
will mix with older memories:
Next time we play them
these images will surface with them, too
So the colors deepen and grow richer
So the days add flavor to our view.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 1, 2012


Special Announcement

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My first collection of poems is out and available for purchase online at Amazon and CreateSpace! 


I think you’ll enjoy the collection — the arc of the message through the poems and the startlingly synergistic art from Mellissae Lucia.  We’d love to see this book reach everyone who might find it inspiring.  If you’d be willing to review it on Amazon, that would help us a lot.  Thanks for your support.

And now for tonight’s poem:

Implicate Order

Every hidden thing
will find its way to surface
in the folding and refolding
of the necessary permutations

All the patterns possible in each design
must lay their sequences 
along the dance of time
It isn’t destiny unrolling
in a rigid line
It’s more the complex undulations of a plane
wherein no signal, however small, is lost
Though it may seem confused, distorted, tossed
by all the other waves that intersect
Each thing that is
will have its full effect.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 29, 2012


Drawing Lessons

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My hand wouldn’t do
what my eyes wanted
But, it protested,
it wasn’t its fault
My eyes had been unclear
My mind’s eye had been ready
to recognize
but not to direct
It wanted my hand
to bring forth beauty
on its own
But it needed more vision.

They stand in need of some negotiation
Some sharing of a step-by-step relation
The hand, the mind, the hand
to share their contributions,
The work to take more than a single iteration
Yes, I see a field of patience is required
to reach the image that my heart desired.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 19, 2012


Cipher

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What kind of day can leave me
 at the end
without a single thought?

— A day of traveling —
of packing up and leaving
— car for plane, plane for car,
car for home
A time to wait, then move —
Wait for lines
Wait for land to turn in panorama 
underneath the plane
Wait for our ride, 
wait for traffic . . .

A day in which I thought I glimpsed
the key to everything —
to my whole life
and life for all of us —
the end to all the troubles 
that have haunted us

A moment where it seemed so clear
and yet I had no words
except “of course”
— a thing I’ve seen before
and so can wait
to have come clear again.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 6, 2012