Many will speak of
the benefit of falling,
of coming completely untethered
from all that you trusted,
of having that done for you
which you were mightily unwilling
to do for yourself
And there’s truth in that,
for any trust that can be swept away
is false,
and what is truly trustworthy
is waiting for discovery
by anyone who’s secretly lucky
to have lost all else.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 8, 2023
Not so much
not having words
for things beyond these realms
as simply being so full
of every new perception
to not have space to say
What’s left behind –
so many shells, and yet
each one has all the traces
of the brilliance, each husk
a smooth inside, the hollow
showing something of what emerged
and took flight
And all that can be spoken of
must also show the essence
of that desire that powers every motion,
of that for which we each will sometime
leave everything to find.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 4, 2022
Though I had imagined an epic story,
it turned out to be a very quiet thing,
though I had pictured myself
coming home in hero’s robes,
there was nothing, really, to show –
nothing I could say about it
So hard it is to describe
the inner transformation,
the little shift in thought
that changed everything
That showed my adversaries
innocent, after all,
that showed my premises mistaken,
but let in so much light
that I was glad to be shown wrong,
glad to be illumined from now on.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 30, 2021
Well, now that I know
that you have to give everything,
hold on to nothing, hold nothing back,
now that I know what I want more than anything,
What am I doing right now?
Taking this moment for emptying, emptying,
till I resemble a waterfall –
emptying everything coming through me
till I can’t be defined by my lack –
starting the flow here
for everything, everything
here in each moment,
to give and give up.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 15, 2021
Having stood now more than once
being the flame,
feeling the light and heat that radiates,
and surer than at any time before
that this is me,
that this is real,
that in this incandescence
is the core of everything
I’ve ever wished to be
I step more quickly forward
to the heat, I offer my full surface
to the transformation –
whatever is at hand within my day
I give as fuel
so I can see and be
the radiance again.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 6, 2021
I consider going, like a disciple,
carrying nothing, preparing to see,
like water from rock in the wilderness,
all that I need
blooming up in the moment
of my offering,
of my service
I imagine being caught up in connection,
the igniting joy arising from contact,
the bounty at the spark of it,
the clarity of knowing
there is no other day
better than this,
no moment worthy of dismissal
The match strike lights
the former emptiness
and everything is here.
©Wendy Mulhern
December 13, 2020
They didn’t think they wanted to get up,
absorbed, as they were, in arranging
the little curlicues of what they called their lives
Which always seemed to promise:
Sometime, somehow, they’d get it right
and win the prize of fortune, fame, delight
They thought it was annoying to be prodded,
even unfair, as it perhaps distracted
them off their game, made them miss their win,
plus it was fearsome to be demanded
to be more than they had ever been
And yet, when they finally awoke.
They had no more words to describe.
The things that looked like onerous demands
were simply invitations to arise,
to inhabit the vast regions of their being,
to humbly wield their quintessential power.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 28, 2020
A thought flows through itself,
turns inside out,
becomes something else,
like the swoop of a swallow
banking on the wind,
delivering the long sought,
dearly tasted
(in pre-birth memory)
freedom
that can only be defined
in this fluidity –
not in options for future actions
but in the essence which,
like water,
is innately unconfined.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 10, 2020
The gateways to where you want to be
are everywhere. You can find them
in anything that reflects light, in everything
that holds a shadow
You can feel it in the yielding,
the soft give of grace, the melting
of preconceptions into something more liquid,
more bracing
The widening of what you know
of yourself and the world,
that stretches you till you rebound,
perception soaring
to where you see with new and tender eyes,
all things now pure, unburdened from disguise.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 22, 2020
What does it take
for me to fathom
that freedom is mine,
is ours, for the taking?
That no condition can hold us hostage,
that no concerted cavalcade of lies
can mask the present sovereignty of truth?
What does it take to notice
how, in transformation, nothing changes?
how, rather, it’s a shift in focus that reveals
what always has been real
and always here.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 12, 2020