Tag Archives: time

What does this mean?

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What does this mean:
it’s not too late? —
when life has rolled on down its path
and suddenly I wonder
why I didn’t think to take a different course —
what it could have been
if I had better understood
and had availed myself
of current opportunities

If I had not been closed,
if I had recognized
there was another way
to think or act

What does it mean,
it’s not too late?
I don’t know what it means
but I am willing to believe,
willing to wait in wonder
to see how this can be true.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 14, 2019

Parade

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Sure, the thoughts of things
I could have done differently
do parade themselves along
from time to time, still sail by
trailing their pronouncements
about how much better things could be
if only …

My policy is
to let them go by once
but not repeatedly,
and never to climb on board.
The now I have is, after all,
the only one I’ve ever had
or ever will. And so it follows
that all good things are here for me,
as they’ve always been.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 27, 2019

The Nature of Now

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This transformation
is like leaving the land,
stepping into the sea,
swimming into the depths offered,
former concerns forgotten

Let me grasp it
just in this little moment —
that will be enough.
I can stand on this moment
and ride out to eternity,
since that is, of course,
the nature of now.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 19, 2019

No Matter What

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In the end we will find
we have not been betrayed
by our choices. We won’t come to wish
we had known better
and done something else,
even when vast scenarios
play themselves out — if only …

Our coming into ourselves
is not a matter of chance,
of choice, any more than is
the river’s course
or the return of waves
back along their cycle at the shore

We’ll meet again — I’m certain —
We’ll celebrate the beauty of our lives,
the tender light we each shed
on the world and on each other
in every place where we were meant to shine,
undimmed by how we dipped our threads through time.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 24, 2019

Viewpoint

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I don’t even feel like looking
at the end of the year —
I have no urging towards retrospectives.
I don’t want to look at next year, either —
I have no interest in resolutions

There will be things in the year,
events and growth and changes,
but I have no sense I can control them.
They will come through like storms
or sprout like seeds,

I will await them
but they will take me by surprise —
I have no view of them but this one,
on the ground, peering through vines and branches,
taking the next step.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 28, 2018

Time Travel

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I let myself float
in the golden light and sound
of Christmas — bright peace
suffuses me, everyone
is haloed. This liquid
dissolves time, at least
for a moment, and I travel
through the years, along
the glow lines,
reaching back
to all the Christmases
where this illumination
punctuates the year.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 23, 2018

Taking the Train

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We have come so far
along this haphazard path,
our footsteps not following
what we thought held our gaze,
our gaze, it turns out, being
too distracted and unfocused
to draw us to our hoped-for destinations

We will take the train —
its paths are laid down,
we don’t need to determine every step.
We’ll arrive where it takes us,
and if our lives feel unmoored, uprooted,
we won’t notice that so much
as long as we are moving.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 16, 2018

Home

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In this damp afternoon
you long for home,
and it seems so far away —
removed in space
or else in time

And the memory
(or is it imagination?)
of walking into a place
and feeling you can relax
since you belong here,
since you are loved,
is as palpable as thirst

It can feel like
we don’t understand
our place in time, in this time,
with these currents of culture
so profoundly disconnected

The big trees that thrive here,
trunks heavy and mossy,
leaves fluttering, turning,
have their own sense of time and place
that we could take shelter in
if we knew how.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 6, 2018

Illusions

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On the train again —
rolling motion, light and landscape,
fast change of parallax
lulling and nourishing

I take in
the illusion of movement
and the fact of stillness,
of being always here
riding along in the illusion of time
where neither past nor future
has any say in the unfolding
of the gifts of now.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 2, 2018

Speed Limit 5 mph

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You are here —
please notice
the colors in the grass
and the way the air is moving

There may be swallows darting
and deer walking and watching,
there probably are turkeys

You may be headed somewhere
but you are also here —
please fill your senses
and let your heart breathe.
You are here —
please go slow and notice.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 12, 2018