On this longest day
I’m guarding your dinner
from the mice
while mosquitoes sing me love songs
on the porch
The last streak of sun
has left the ground
and the neighbor’s dogs
have started their night time commentary
What I am to learn today
I may not yet know
but it’s the longest day
so there is time.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 20, 2021
What a relief it is to realize
I don’t have to direct the pieces,
I don’t need
to make things come together
or even figure out what needs fixing
My shadow was smiling as it walked
in the evening sun, down to the cabin –
I could tell by the bounce in its gait –
it, too, must be relieved
not to have to determine
where it’s going – to simply glide
through the dapples and into shade.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 19, 2021
Walk into the quiet,
feel your footsteps echo
open up the doors
and let the wind blow through
Try this: the screen doors, almost closed,
will whistle, even howl –
close them all the way, and you will hear
the birdsong again, and distant traffic,
and ravens holding court across the field
Daisies are rampant in the fields,
and bracken fern beyond them –
everything has shot up fast, yearning
towards seed
And as for us, we’re just working
on learning to be quiet,
how to be quiet, and still progress,
how to be quiet and still
while wind and sun progress through summer,
how to inhabit our house with mastery,
how to inhabit this house enough
to find it finished.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 18, 2021
It only takes one day
for us to start believing
in summer’s end –
some clouds and wind,
the possibility of night rain –
and we notice
a different tone across the fields –
though they are parched and seem set
for unremitting dryness,
a siege span they must cross
before the rains come,
some of the yellow is also
leaves starting to turn
here and there,
leaves falling and drifting in the wind,
getting ready
We are not ready,
but that has never
made any difference.
We will be there with it
when it comes.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 21, 2020
Morning, after a night
mostly too warm for blankets,
I’m banking up on cool,
wearing my long, light, sleeveless dress,
watching the hazy fingers of sun
reach across the shadows
Turkey families with their
thirst quenching chirps
trot up crosswise to the sun,
dogs bark beyond the fields
The day will steam and bustle
and then bake, the trees will rustle
in the hot winds. We will find a way
to drape ourselves through it
until the coolness
on the other side.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 16, 2020
The heat kept ramping up
through the afternoon,
furnace winds blowing through,
drawing the moisture
out of everything
We looked for places
where we wouldn’t wilt,
employed extravagant technology,
and then, in hammock’s shade,
a breeze could soothe us some,
as long as we were quiet
Inner peace can help us cool
until the evening finally
releases its refreshing breath
and we can rest at last.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 26, 2020
The summer winds heat up, crossing the fields,
but here among the firs, they find some coolness
and I find respite from the baking afternoon
Of the many kinds of nourishment,
this one of taking a loved book
and going somewhere else entirely
with my mind, with my attention,
feels like the one I need today
I will want more of this –
more, perhaps, than I will choose
to think I am allowed –
For now, though, I will take it
and escape.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 20, 2020
June suddenly starts steaming on towards solstice,
rain remembered only in the reaching roots
of grass seeds sprouting,
and the moisture in the air
that calls all plants to rise
Summer visits us in moments ripe with memory,
the feeling of the air, the taste of ice cream,
the sprint of possibilities,
the wide expanse of days,
our call to be here in witness,
to ride its spirit like breath,
to move like wind through trees.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 19, 2020
In the wilting heat
the songs that come to me
are ones I’ve sung before
or heard so often forty years ago
that all the notes are etched deep in my mind
The same with words, with poems,
as lines I’ve read and loved come back to me,
along with ones I’ve written,
and the only way to find new words
is to seek shade, and the space it brings,
for leaves, and lines,
to hold themselves full.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 5, 2019
Scents of the moment —
buddleia and honeysuckle,
sense of the moment —
last wild strands of summer
whipping in the wind,
last mad reaching,
flinging themselves towards infinity
before the wefts of order
gather them and tuck them deftly in.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 30, 2018