Tag Archives: story

Reassessing

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And if it turns out
the rules we’ve been playing by
are not the real ones,
if it turns out
the object of the game
is not what we thought
and all our cheering on
and all our disappointments
all this time
have been askew
from how the actual score was counted

We may find
we still have made
progress we weren’t noticing —
skills attained, if faultily employed,
and gains that came
from bringing our best efforts
to what we thought, till now,
had been the game

And then we’ll have a new focus,
and then the way we move will change
as we employ a more attuned alignment
and stretch into our fuller range.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 20, 2017

Sense of Self

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For awhile, it’s important
to get our stories straight,
to open out the crushed frames
to let the wind and light
flow through our sense of self

Later, as the light grows stronger,
the particular grids of our stories
become less relevant,
overwhelmed, as they are,
by what streams through the spaces
as we shift our sense of self
away from the lines
into the brightness of being.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 13, 2017

Reframing

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Save me from the cobwebs
of these stories,
save me from the crazed crack mazes,
save me from wandering, once again,
down these tired paths
to their mindless ends,
living these same frames
over and over, reaching the same conclusions

There is no need to live like this —
if I don’t like where these paths end
I don’t need to start down them.
If I don’t want to dwell in miry stuckness
I can refuse to take it in

If I want to live in light,
this is where I must begin.
Those worn out stories
can tell themselves to themselves.
It isn’t blindness
to lift my head,
it isn’t cheating
to choose a different place to play.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 2, 2017

The Big Room

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They came out into the big room
where the light
from the circle’s glow
served to diffuse the memory
of where they came from,
the narrow passage ways,
the dogged competition,
the rationed light awarded skimpily
to just a few

The things they strived for —
what were they anyway?
Their disappointments
softly erased,
their great achievements
oddly forgettable
and now forgotten
in this new place.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 14, 2017

A Word

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And as to why a word would lurk,
coming to mind, out of context,
amid no other thoughts,
I had no notion

But there it was again,
“spavined” — a word
I’ve never used,
a word I had to look up
when I found it
in someone else’s poem

Not that there’s no context
for such a word
in details of my life
but just — I wasn’t thinking it
yet there it was.

So this time I considered,
maybe this word has come to mind
for something in my life desiring soothing,
something wanting affirmation, not disposal,
something I can lift to be redeemed

In the simple, sweet, and peaceful way
of all redemption,
in the way of
“ask, and you receive.”

©Wendy Mulhern
June 20, 2017

Redirect

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Within myself
I note the quiet purr and hum
of feelings, how they create thoughts
to prop them up, stories to sustain
their longer lives

I notice I can choose what I will feel
by careful observation of the stories

It is enough, it seems, to notice.
Then the feelings look up, startled
and forget what they were on about.
I can take them by their manes
and lead them home to calmness.
We can laugh together, a little,
I can redirect them —
Not every dip deserves descending into,
not every story testifies to truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 7, 2017

Deconstruction

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The whole story begins to rip
like a wet paper bag,
contents pushing through the corners

We have been so far
from where we belong,
so removed
from what we’re meant to be,
bundled away in this dark sack
wrapped up in our separate packages

But here’s the rain
and here’s a soggy mess,
and here in streaked glimpses
we see some light

We will get out of here somehow
and lift our faces to the rain
and sing and sing
and dance and dance.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 26, 2017

First Day of the Year

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And if we sit around
reading books all day,
one day a year,
what does it matter?

And if we lost our equilibrium
for one long moment,
if we yelled and screamed
and said unrepeatable things
to someone who won’t remember,
does it matter?

We woke up this morning feeling good,
feeling close, well rested, well connected.
Later, we felt the weight
of our responsibility to save the world
through the concentration of our best thoughts,
but that passed quickly,
overtaken by a story in a book
and the putting aside
of most everything present

I may pick it up again
with the grave attention it deserves:
tomorrow gives us another chance.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 1, 2017

Choice

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The atmosphere of my temple
is my choice. If I feel clouded,
if I can’t find the joy amid the sorrow
of my story, if the words I use
to help remember what I am
fall flat, if it seems that things
far beyond my control are at fault,
this is what I must remember

The atmosphere of my temple
is my choice. I can choose now
to let the story lie inert,
a sleeve with no breath in it.
I can choose to let warm infinity
fill me in tones of gold and orange,
I can let my peace rest, soft, around me.
I can turn away from words
to that which doesn’t need them,
I can fill my temple
with what I live to feel.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 25, 2016

Dramas

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When we thought we walked on solid ground,
our world was full of dramas —
so many things that could go right or wrong,
and underneath them,
the persistent weight
of hopes that never quite vaulted
to their victories, and the resultant lowering,
over weeks and years,
of the ceiling of our possibilities

As we began to learn that substance
is something else,
that what we thought we walked on
was separating, like melting floes,
but we were still standing,
the dramas, too, took on a different meaning

Things still matter to us deeply
but not so much for turns of plot
as for the places, shining through everything,
where our truth transforms the story,
where we prove that we are free.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 23, 2016