Summer Again

daisy and self-heal

So, summer comes —
sweet streaming freedom,
if only for a moment,
the body memory of that release
stretching far into adulthood
infusing the smell of privet
with aching undertones

There will be years for engineering lives,
which still take on a life of their own
and fly along between the lurches
where everything falls down. We pick it up,
we readjust the load.

It now has all those memories,
each long enough to get lost in,
packed in bundles like a year of papers
to take home
to pack in bins
for some later reckoning
while summer sings its magic
through our bones.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 20, 2016

Jail Visit

tree stump

And if you need to talk for a long time,
I can listen for a long time.
I can follow your face and voice
through the laughter, through all those
reflections and memories, down
to the place of tears, back out again,
if you want to keep talking.

I don’t need to say anything
till you’re really done,
and I can’t know what I’ll say
until we get there.
This is a safe place —
you can surely know
that I will hold you in compassion
through the whole anguished tale,
I will hold steady
and yes, I will pray.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 16, 2016

Boxes

Oak and firs

Everyone has their little box,
everyone has their story
posted on a placard
outside their confinement

(This is the long-tailed macaque
who comes from forests in Sumatra,
this is the gila monster,
king of the Arizona desert)

Upon the walls are painted
scenes to make our diorama,
illusions of our native habitat,
jungle depths in two dimensions

If we sit sad in our little box,
it’s not because the picture is inaccurate,
if we scratch away the paint,
it’s not wonton destruction of our paradise

Eventually we are forced inward
to grasp the Mind-power
that has the key to see us home,
sees us clear beyond the dream
dissolves the box, and finds us free.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 4, 2016

Just a Story

poplar

It’s just a story.
It’s just a story,
and these deep heavings
of vicarious grief
need not possess me
any longer than I choose

It’s a story, and its aftermath
was just a dream, just a dream
accompanied by torments
of the almost sleeper by my side

It all got slept away,
it all got side-stepped
in my midnight insistence
on immunity

So why, in the shadow
of this overcast afternoon,
do I feel the mounting, behind my eyes,
of what would be tears
if they felt sure they had a cause?

Every story must need
to be heard, be felt,
sweep up a community to circle it,
to deliver it down
to where all is resolved
in the peace-deep ever stirring sea.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 21, 2016

Time and Being

bike trail sun and shadows

Everything you are, you’ve always been —
We see you through the course of time
to help us understand

The fullness of your being
is more than we’re equipped
to take in at a single view

We see the infant, and the youth,
and what we call the arc of your progression
as if each were the only you extant

Whereas, in fact, your being is
the whole of them, and more —
a thing we’d know if we saw more dimensions

We see us through the course of time
and still don’t understand — our view of life is just a scan
across the field of what we’ve always been

And nothing’s lost —
no radiance can fail to show or cease to shine,
and all we are is here for us to be.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 12, 2016

Straw/Gold

front yard

I’m thinking of the straw/gold inversion
as fat drops of rain begin to round the evening,
closing the day as it began,
framing the sunny interlude in soft gray,
green of spring still predominating

What glitters in a day
can be cashed in for joy,
but only in the absence of entitlement,
which turns kind gestures into ash
and cries, limping,
for what it has not received

While even the most humble stalk,
absorbing warmth, filling up with light,
will shine its bright bar across a memory,
its gift across a life.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 8, 2016

No Story

Laurels

Well you told your story
sounding so justified,
it had me bleeding
for the other side

There has to be a way,
there has to be a win
where forgiveness counts
and compassion enters in

Stories are as common as desires
and as compelling —
I get caught up in the string of one
and in its telling,
and then I see in me
someone I don’t recognize,
I find I have forgotten
someones eyes . . .

No story, please, to set us each
in our appointed place of right or wrong,
just this, the being here,
the blessing and the song.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 31, 2016

Not My Battle

sun rays in yard

This is not my battle,
this is not my battle,
I can let it go

This is not something
I can lose, not by wrong moves,
not by neglect,
this is not something that would benefit
from the weight of my anxiety.
I will not throw my weight around,
even in the privacy
of my own mind

This is something
that is well handled
by something much greater
than my small repertoire
of strategies

This is not my battle.
This is a time for me
to watch and learn.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 29, 2016

Yearning

helebore

See how we are all yearning,
how we reach, and cycle back,
see how we pursue what we believe
will give us what we need —
we reach, we grasp, we cycle back

Whatever stories we may try to use
as traction, to show some progress,
relative at least,
against the wave of others who are striving,
just keep us in the loop of not receiving

Look! We are all yearning,
and what we want is really all the same,
and no one’s course is any more approved
than any other.

Let us join hands,
for in this gesture we may find
(hands clasped, hearts unshielded,
current flowing)
if we can’t give each other
what each other needs,
we’ll still begin approaching what we long for,
we’ll still create the openness
that lets us each receive.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 16, 2016

Wishes

frosty grasses

If I revisit
the childhood conversation
about wishes granted,
here’s what I’ve decided I’d request:

Not things I could predict,
but freshness in my days —
yes, I’d ask to be amazed,
to have my sense of everything
frequently upended,
but with the caveat
that everything be good.

It’s not too much to ask,
since good is, after all,
the one enduring fact,
the essence from which
each entity unfolds,
to which it ever yearns

Good is the kernel
of every sorry effort
and every noble gesture.
Good, on further thought,
doesn’t even need wishes.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 26, 2016