Tag Archives: story

Love, unstoried

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I”m looking for a way to be home,
looking for a way to love that won’t fail,
seeking to wean myself from stories
of the quick flicker and mysterious arc
of love – how it can flame and crash
or just be gone

I know that love has never been like that –
when it touched into the stories,
it brought a power with it
that no story could sustain,
contain, retain, restrain –
and so I’m seeking love
outside of stories,
the love that, when they’re done,
will still remain.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 28, 2021

Stories of the Light

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These truths are told in riddles,
because any of the words,
if taken without the whole,
would miss completely,
would lead thought
down a cramped and narrow maze
with no conclusion,
just a looping back
to the same old tired illusions,
cause and effect trapped
to serve the ends of lies

But once the whole is grasped,
its presence becomes obvious
in every story, every hope,
each earnest effort,
and the light, which, after all,
had to be there for us to see anything,
turns out to be the substance of our being,
and we’ll  be no longer duped to think
it has to serve the shadow  –
the shadow disappears, and we are free.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 30, 2021

All ye in free

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I wanted to comfort
my seven year old self
as she walked the asphalt playground
singing a song to herself
to provide a good story
for why she walked alone,
never dreaming
what lines she had crossed
in the effort to excel
at a game with broken rules,
how her own scoffing at others
was what condemned her to her solitary lot

In comforting myself
I wish to comfort
every lonely one
(in their past or in their present)
who was skewered by the twisted rules,
tricked into condemning,
then finding themselves caught
on one side of the story or the other

I wish to tell us all
the game and all its rules are over  –
all ye all ye in free –
come on home!

©Wendy Mulhern
March 22, 2021

Step Forth

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All the stories you have heard
are not your story,
all the endings you may have thought
foreshadowed what would come of you
are not your ending

Pick up your tale – don’t let it
drag in the dust –
you aren’t ordained to go the way
you have been told befalls
everyone else,
and no one else is either

Pay attention  – this is not a time to drift,
it’s not a time to fall,
It’s time to catch your upward lift,
time to embrace your all

Take in the new unfolding steps
as courage leads you –
This is your story, and the world’s  –
Step forth – it needs you.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 23, 2021

Time Off

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Somehow we needed to take a pause
from the colors of duty
which are the colors of
everything we see in our day,
the chores to do, 
the work to prepare for,
and encamp within the colors
of other worlds — of fantasy,
of music, of time off
from our trajectory,
to drift in the colors 
of movies, and shows,
and the sense that
if we don’t leave tomorrow
we’ll still arrive.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 18, 2020


A Worthy Read

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Since your words proved able
to make me dream,
to make me dream of caring
and of caring for,
and of a desperate effort
to drink from a fountain
where the water flowed flat
along its spiky sphere,
hard to get ones mouth on,
of people trying to connect
while stories
kept putting doors between them

I dreamed all these dreams
and you were in them –
less in their depths
than in the coming out,
as I woke up, and again,
as I returned to sleep

Since your words could do this,
I deem them
an honest story,
I consider them
a worthy read.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 1, 2020

The Whole Jalopy

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From the place we ride
along the contours of the story,
high along the climax
or underneath,
fading into background,
rolling up to stark relief

The roles we think we have, the destiny,
the share of light or grief or glory,
the way that we may try to parlay
one place for another, one situation
for something we believe
will gain us more

We’ve called these things our lives
but we are learning
these are just distractions,
these are misplaced vectors
sending hopes careening
along the sides,
never getting closer
to their desires

We start to see
another gain, another goal,
standing still, letting the whole story roll
away without us. What we want
was never there.
It’s always been here.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 31, 2020

Dreams will be my friends

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I find myself suddenly hungry
for fiction, for magic,
for peppermint mochas
in well-lighted places,
for time to get lost in a book

At the end of my dream
I found myself flying,
flapping huge wings
that started as arms,
down the dirt and gravel road
through the woods,
back to the cabin

I stayed up late last night
reading and tending the fire
till I was too sleepy to continue.
The sleepiness returned today
before the work was over,
and the book was also calling me

We’ll go home soon,
and dreams will be my friends,
giving me story while they also
give me rest.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 10, 2019

A Truer Story

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We are hungry for stories,
for story is the mind’s path,
the promise
that we could wend our way
out of the dullness of where we think we are
to something redemptive,
something we can almost taste

And we are foiled
by the devil’s practice
of shoving the tails of the stories
into their mouths, of making sure
they only lead us back
to the same place

We are foiled by opposition —
by the assertion
that stories require enemies —
good guys and bad guys,
even if only in our own minds

There is a truer story.
It exists in the place before the impulse,
before the thought. It exists
in searing lifting pure light
of your still unnamed desire,
and if you follow it,
it will lead you home.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 19, 2019