Another rain serenade,
collected chorus from roof and gutters,
background patter modulated
by the breath of wind
We’ll sleep well again tonight,
tucked in with gratitude,
secure in our house haven.
We’ll grow like spring shoots
in the moist air, stretch into
whatever morning is spread before us.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 10, 2022
After dark the summer rain
starts up again, its breath blown softly
through the open windows,
its quiet rustle
accompanied by one frog
It seems to plan
to grow back all the grass
we mowed today,
whose scent it sends to us
sweet and for free.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 9, 2022
It’s a year of long grass –
seed heads at face height sometimes,
clover our feet disappear in,
visually soft, full of many colors
within the green
It’s a year of eager growth
encouraged by forgiveness –
something within rising continually up,
touching the softness,
reaching into it
Everything has been washed clean.
We, too, can feel it,
we, too, discover flowers
that may not have bloomed
(at least not like this)
for many years.
We offer our fields as gift,
as mystery, as thanks.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 1, 2022
The little yellow flowers
that filled the field this morning
have almost all closed up by afternoon,
the clicking orange-winged grasshoppers
continue with their short and busy flights,
the tousled seed heads, dandelion-like,
shake in the wind and sometimes let seeds go
Here at the top of the heat arc of the day,
it could almost be summer,
except the breeze is cooler, kinder,
and there is moisture in the ground,
and there’s a poignancy
to the sharpness of the curve,
lending urgency to insects,
brightening colors by bending them down.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 24, 2021
I kept following the water
down the braiding of waves, of sand,
pursuing the ebb lines
where the incoming waves were faint,
but watching for the buildup
where two or three would join
and I would run from them
up the beach, letting them catch me,
but not by much,
holding my skirts (mostly)
out of their reach
The children on the beach
jumped and ran
with the energy of the waves,
the same quick action,
the same total engagement
We filled up with their joy
and their abandon, and the steady
but ever changing
motion of the sea,
soothing us, bringing us,
though through shifting sands,
to firmer ground .
©Wendy Mulhern
August 12, 2021i
It can still seem like a long slow trek
through heat and drought
till the rains come,
but August also starts to offer
glimmers of civility –
dawn a little later,
sunset sooner,
the beat of heat
a little shorter,
and these weightless moments
where time floats in golden glow,
and crickets and grasses,
turkeys and deer,
bracken and fir
go about their lives,
where presence is sufficient,
holding and deserving all attention,
compelling us
with the eternal now.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 2, 2021
I had decided
it was too dark outside
and too hot inside
to put the date on the page,
to wait, to try to find a poem
while the deepening sky
kept showing more colors
long after the sun had set
and the crickets – well,
they sang as if
I hadn’t already written about them,
and the thrush in the distance
stopped after a while,
but the cricket cadences
with their polyrhythms
kept the song going
and the evening breeze came
in time for us to sleep.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 26, 2021
And suddenly
there are crickets,
and the dawn air has scents
I struggle to identify –
dried wildflowers, sun on fir –
and the easy summer feeling
that still tastes like freedom
rests in my steps
It is a subtle tipping, perhaps,
towards what is next –
long before fall’s rush of excitement,
but something weightless
in the balance
after the climb, before the descent.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 14, 2021
At some point I noticed
I was thinking of the day
in terms of enduring –
waiting out the heat till evening,
so I took a cold shower
and sat on the porch in the shade
listening to cicadas and quiet birds
I’ve been training myself to step away
from the clenched pause from enjoyment
I called enduring,
to recast that quality
as a more alert patience,
a nimbler approach to living the moments
I will traverse anyway
and might as well enjoy.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 26 2021
Everyone is looking for places to stay cool,
and I’m feeling the wish
to write a long story,
one of missed connections
and broken threads –
lost threads seeking each other over years,
sad and tragic mismatches
that people settled for
after their dreams were lost
But all the threads of the story
are subsumed,
changed as tide pools change
when tide comes in –
things that were disconnected
become one,
things that were lost
unite on holy ground.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 25, 2021