When I can remember
how time turns out to be
nothing at all,
how the wholeness of you
was complete before we knew you,
continued so, all throughout that span
and is so now,
then I can feel
the joy of your being
that touched so many moments
and blessed so many hearts
so thoroughly, then as now,
and I can know
a similar purpose
attends each of us.
Your light can still
guide us there.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 7, 2018
We get into the rhythm of the work,
pneumatic nail gun and the air compressor,
the scratch of asphalt shingles laid down against each other,
the soothing arc of our repeated motion
It smells like blossoms when we stop and notice,
the air is warm enough, cool enough too —
while many pieces of our lives are scattered,
this work is something we can do
The birds are taking up their evening chorus,
smells of people’s dinners join the breeze,
it feels like it’s a mode we could continue
for another couple years at least —
could be the course we take, the path we climb
unless, until, we’re lifted out of time.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 21, 2018
Time is of no more use to me.
I’ve been forced to give it up.
From now on I will approach it broadsides,
I will move in the current
where our growing awareness of Spirit
sweeps up all the broken dreams of history,
sets to right every small and large sadness
that ever occurred,
unites us with our past and future generations
and chimes a chorus
that will echo throughout the vast eternity
where there is time no longer.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 18, 2018
And in the ponderous time
it seems to take
to do the simple tasks,
may we gain experience
in presence, and in gratitude,
in noticing, in overcoming
And how we find our rhythm
with all the things that don’t need clocks,
that arc along the day
according to their own grace,
the kiss of rain or sun
enough to crown their deeds.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 10, 2018
The magnitude of this redemption
is that it glows through all time
even as dawn
glows through all our space,
even as the radiance of love
makes everything alright,
even our history.
Any fears and sorrows that lurked there
are resolved,
for truth’s appearance
alters the past
as surely as it does the present
As for the future —
what will we know of it?
— when we are so rapt
in the presence
of unfolding day.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 30, 2017
Nah, I’m not approaching
some kind of threshold —
no door advances towards me,
no conveyer bears me, willy nilly,
towards a place of change
My progress rather
is like the dawn
and the stately procession
of summer clouds
No reckoning, no tally,
just the roll of days
and the smile of light footfall,
barefoot communion,
electrifying praise.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 13, 2017
It is the time of honeysuckle,
the time of abandon
where vines wander and tangle,
where forbs race each other up
to the flower dotted tops
of their foliage
And birds are coaxing their young to flight
and it feels like there’s enough time —
enough time to get lost in,
enough time to find your cause.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 19, 2017
I hear, in the echo of distant crow caws,
a time link, a lacuna
that takes me quickly back east
to early summer mornings,
my vision now split
in the double exposure
so often engendered
when twilight comes late
and dream drifts
could call it morning
till I come back, startled,
to here and now,
watching my perceptions
settle like fallen petals.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 17, 2017
Midnight threatens
to overcome the day —
I can keep working
up to its threshold
but it will be tomorrow then
and what I accomplish
will no longer add to
today’s to dos’ ta-dahs
No matter. My life cares little
about calendars these days.
I have to think hard sometimes
about what day it is.
Just me and the rhythms
of someone who’s left time behind
and the progress that scribbles
bright and rushing
outside all the lines.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 4, 2017
When the sky clears,
it’s bliss to be ready
to jump on that wind
and journey
northward with the flat-bottomed clouds
while wind chimes sing,
it’s enlivening to feel the cold
and be free to go
There’s a wistfulness to knowing
I will go inside and wait
for my time window to open,
which may or may not coincide
with the day’s hour of sun.
©Wendy Mulhern
April 22, 2017