Tag Archives: transformation

Imagine

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What if we discovered
we’d been, all this time,
strung up in nets,
our juices harnessed
to do things we would always sense
were sideways to our desires,
so that we felt the shadow
of regret, of disappointment
dogging our every act

If we should learn
this is not our purpose,
this is not our true companion –
we are not designed
to do things that always
cause somebody pain

If we could feel
our energies released
from those old nets,
slipping through like bars of light,
gaining strength and brightness
with their freedom

What joy, what power
we would wield! slicing away
everything unmerciful, unkind,
gathering the clan of all of us
into our rightful, foreordained design.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 7, 2017

Unbowed

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I’m going to tell you some things
that get down to the deepest
level of thought,
the place where cause and effect
are calculated, the place where,
regardless of the words you tell yourself,
you make decisions of your heart and movement

(What you believe, you see,
cannot be seen by what you say —
what you believe is shown
by what you do)

Down here, you’ll see
the bargains that you made
along the way,
the things against yourself
that you agreed to
because you thought
you had no other choice

I’m telling you now:
you can let these go
when you see they haven’t served you
and have never even
given you anything

You can let them go
when you see yourself
standing in your native stature,
undiminished and unbowed.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 2, 2017

Translated

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I got caught like a moth
between the folds of illusion
and the real light, and I thought
I was working the solution
but it was just a dream
running parallel to the truth
but without its power

Let me take the time to wake up.
It won’t seem like the story I’m imagining
but I will be lifted and straightened
from within, I will be infused
with new understanding.
I will not roll down the great conveyor belt
towards death. I will be translated,
I will walk free.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 17, 2017

Cup

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Let me lift this cup of day
to my lips, let me taste
the light, the peppered challenges,
the satori of new illuminations

Let me lift the cup of this day
to my lips, let all the moments
kiss me with their inspiration,
let my thirst be ever quenched,
and my hunger — let it be awakened

Let me hold this cup of day,
this day, up to the light for blessing,
let me drink deeply, water to wine,
and in serving, let me be blessed.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 14, 2017

Still small voice

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I was asking you to go
to that still point
where there was no argument,
where the raging anguish
that roared at the surface
was unheard,
where the tumbling waves above
could only relay
a small tremor,
just at your heel

I felt like instead
I was just shouting
against the din,
so I considered:
my tiny voice
will never be
the still small one
that moves the mountains
but you have a voice within
and it is speaking.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 5, 2017

Life Essence

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You may think
you want to go back
to the old life, the quid pro quo,
your place along the grid
of fear and confidence,
the little pleasures
in what you overcome

But once you’ve grasped the brilliant core,
there’s no hope for it —
that light will burn right through
all the warp and weft
of what you thought you were

They can’t hold it —
you have to find the structure
made out of the same stuff,
a practice that embraces it
and lets it shine.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 11, 2017

Reframing

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Save me from the cobwebs
of these stories,
save me from the crazed crack mazes,
save me from wandering, once again,
down these tired paths
to their mindless ends,
living these same frames
over and over, reaching the same conclusions

There is no need to live like this —
if I don’t like where these paths end
I don’t need to start down them.
If I don’t want to dwell in miry stuckness
I can refuse to take it in

If I want to live in light,
this is where I must begin.
Those worn out stories
can tell themselves to themselves.
It isn’t blindness
to lift my head,
it isn’t cheating
to choose a different place to play.

©Wendy Mulhern
September 2, 2017

The Big Room

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They came out into the big room
where the light
from the circle’s glow
served to diffuse the memory
of where they came from,
the narrow passage ways,
the dogged competition,
the rationed light awarded skimpily
to just a few

The things they strived for —
what were they anyway?
Their disappointments
softly erased,
their great achievements
oddly forgettable
and now forgotten
in this new place.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 14, 2017

Steps

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These are confident steps
we take, under the high sky,
not that we’ve walked here before,
but we are guided
by the tall grass
and the persistent wind
and a sense of direction
that has suddenly emerged within

These are times of moving,
knowing our steps teach us
in ways our projections couldn’t,
receiving their secret knowledge
through our feet

This is why we are here,
we think, and hardly wonder
how we could have called it living,
passive in the shadow
of what the big box told us
before we walked from it,
before we were free.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 10, 2017

The Violence of Conformity

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As we start to escape
the violence of conformity,
we owe much to those
who first spoke out,
who wouldn’t call it courage
because it was desperation,
because it was the only option
besides soul-death,
because something deeper down
that instinct for survival
(or maybe that’s exactly what it was)
forced them to stand up,
howl out their truth

Who will witness this?
and who will turn
from the smooth and lethal cruelty
that calls itself normality?
Who will sprout up
in the wild, every-which-way
tumbling burgeoning
self proclamation of life?

©Wendy Mulhern
August 9, 2017