Tag Archives: time

Time and Being

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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

Processes

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Ridgecrest dawn

It is evening
but the skylights haven’t darkened yet —
clouds are still visible beside the cedar treetops,
moving east

My mind reaches into the boldening gloaming
where daylight is stretching
visibly longer than just last week.
I feel the lifting off of a forgotten weight,
like clarity after dizziness,
like fog condensing on my eyelids as it dissipates

There can be comfort
in the rolling out of time,
February’s fleetness,
the winds of spring,
the progress of all life’s processes,
underground, overhead,
within.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 7, 2016

Endgame

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Long dock

When I think of the endgame,
my breath catches,
time abandons the illusion
of moving at an orderly pace.
I wonder how my thought affects it,
if it will stop entirely
if I wait too hard

Is this like a waterfall
where the acceleration
is beyond my doing
and I will be swept along
regardless of my efforts?

Or is it like a long field
that I must walk,
and I will only get there
step by step,
no faster than the movement I initiate?

I don’t know. Some days
it feels like both at once.
My heart curls
toward a new beginning.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 1, 2016

Year’s End

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windy beach

There is, perhaps, a moment
for looking back along the year,
calling to remembrance
the things that were unknown,
the things we thought might be
before events rolled out their tracks,
other possibilities extinguished
by emerging facts

There’s always time
for flashes of gratitude
for what has developed —
understanding, skills acquired,
brightening deepening streams of love

There’s less time for wistfulness
at things left behind —
the wind here blows strong and steady,
bearing us onward
in our present purpose.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 27, 2015

Is this a function of years?

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pond with fall blackberry

Things start to feel
more like a story,
less like my life

All the things we failed to engineer,
all the things we tried to make happen,
the things that happened anyway,
the time that passed,
all the little memories —
trapped jewels of moments
glinting in the web
of our day-to-day past

The soft glow of acceptance
soothes the edges
of fervent and forgotten hopes —
we will not cause
the things that happen
but we will move through them
like light across the day,
we will take them in
to our ascending warmth.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 10, 2015

Divine Adventure

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Bandon sheen

There is no place
on the shore of Love
for fear or time.
They disappear
like footprints on wet sand
(bright gleaming hollows
mark their departure)

There is no time of fear,
there is no fear of time,
for neither one has relevance.
There is no weight on the hours
and no waiting for hours —
Each of Life’s moments
answers for itself,
singular, sublime,
packed with blessing
in the unfolding seasons
of Love’s adventure.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 10, 2015

Slow

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blue patch

Within the restful hush
of pre-dawn stirrings
you can feel the low tone of patient stone
that took in fall’s impassioned chill
all through the night
and now releases it
with no hurry,
equalizing the swifter emotions
of day and night
in slow perspective,
as elders view the young
with quiet humor —
nothing of heaven or tragedy
won or lost in a single day.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 4, 2015

Cradle

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Marcola dusk

Catch me up in the echo of wind
blowing through the dark
with the comfort of miles traversed
up along the coast and through the city,
journeys of clouds and rain bringing promise
of the year’s steady, steadying turning

Let my wistfulness, that longed
to be wrapped and held,
be cradled in this,
the purpose that works its
equalizing movement
all through the night.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 1, 2015

Parade

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cloud

In certain moments we can sit and look
at floes that float down rivers,
clouds that ride in great flotillas
across the sky,
lives that roll
down the slope of time,
accelerating in the weight
of all they have accumulated,
bringing the past with them,
slowly melting in the heat
of the present

What is actively alive here?
And what has settled
for the insulation of memories,
referencing states of being
which themselves, perhaps,
were all caught up
in the glamour and swirl
of confections of stories?

Is this a picture
of how we all go,
or is each of us, in our true selves,
something else entirely,
bemused by the illusion of us
in which we sometimes see ourselves
and which it sometimes seems that others see?

©Wendy Mulhern
August 13, 2015

Eternal

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bluff morning

It’s time.
It’s time to pierce this bland shroud,
this heavy and impermeable sense
of being held down,
of having an internal weight
that droops my efforts ever toward inertia,
proclaiming all that’s good must end
while what is bad will rumble on forever

Every live thing testifies otherwise:
Every green shoot pushes up and out
against its boundaries,
reveling in strength
turning the downward pull
into its springboard
in its eternal act of living power

Every sentient being
delights in helping others,
in striking up the magic multiplying
chords of giving joy
that flow in sweet increase from hand to hand,
that sing forever down the grateful land.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 19, 2015