Tag Archives: transformation

Coming Clean

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As I notice myself
keeping a wary distance
from people being nice
in an L.A. kind of way
and people wearing urban liberal
like trendy clothes,
and people easy in their answers —
any kind of answers —
for why the world is wrong
in so many errant places

I see it’s all the same —
my wariness, their certainty,
the self-approving niceness,
none of which have the virtue
of simple, heartfelt keening
for the world

No matter. We’ll bring our husks,
our empty shells, our broken explanations,
we’ll set them down
where Truth’s tide will take them.
We’ll let ourselves be washed and lifted
in the embracing waves.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 6, 2017

Putting off the old man

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I don’t need to be
any of the people
I’ve framed myself as.

I don’t have relationships
with any of these personas.
I don’t owe them anything —
not loyalty, not justification —
don’t need to be angry or sad
on their account.

I don’t need to keep tabs
on the stories, the slights,
the constant explanations,
don’t need to rehearse
for some imagined future confrontation.

My being has nothing to do with that.
What I’m worth is not subject
to the outcome of any contest.
These dreams leave no trace of memory
when they’re gone —
I can start here
with the practice of who I am.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 2, 2017

Unmasking

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The light keeps brightening
as we remove the layers —
what once was dim and fickle
becomes a stronger flicker,
becomes a steady glow,
becomes a blaze

We will drink this light
like flowing water,
we will be borne
in its currents,
we will rise like bubbles,
all that we thought defined us
fully forgotten
in our daily learning,
in our daily flight.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 29, 2017

As it turned out

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We had rehearsed our story
so many times. We had imagined
great cachet in it, in the moment
we could look back, victorious,
and the eager ears that would
take in our tale

Funny to notice
how little difference
it turned out to make,
how all the dramas we narrated
to ourselves, and to imagined others,
seem irrelevant,
caught up, as we are,
in the constant music,
in the enchanting brightness,
ever unfolding,
of here.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 16, 2017

New Words

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A few steps behind us
as we were leaving
we heard the crash and rumble,
structures falling down

Nothing of it touched us, though,
nor did it touch anyone —
I guess we were all leaving
at the same time

I guess we are arriving
at where we need to be,
and we’ll recognize each other here,
see as we have never seen

We’ll need new words for this,
for how we feel
in this place without dust,
as we find ourselves real.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 15, 2017

What I Hoped to Convey

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No sadness, large or small,
no let down, present or imagined,
has any right to cast a pall
on your exuberant existence

There may be things you need to learn—
this doesn’t make you bad.
The fires of transformation, as they burn,
will bring you, clear and brightened,
far beyond
anything you may have thought you had

Each of us gets to go there,
each of us has to —
each of us, emerging from the flames,
will be new-formed, holy,
and yet the very essence
of what we’ve always known we are.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 28, 2017

Paths

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There is a freedom in discovering
you’re on your own,
that most of life’s important tasks
you’ll face alone

There’s a relief in realizing
it’s not your job
to save anyone else —
their salvation, too, is their own

They, like you, are guided
on a singular arc
that can’t be analyzed
standing outside it,
they, like you, have all they need
to make the journey,
like you, they need to listen from inside

What a surprise, then,
the rush, the roar
(as hooves that pound together,
as wings that soar)
of finding we are moving
in the same beat,
thunderous in our unity,
burnished in our heat.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 9, 2017

After

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And suddenly
I feel myself standing tall,
tall enough to walk between
the sun-sifting trunks of slender trees,
their high limbs held in the dance of prayer
always, through sun and rain,
wind and seasons,
starlight, moonlight, daylight

I can move softly
among the shifting colors,
delivered here, as I am,
after a long struggle
(I fought with myself and won,
or so it would appear)
the struggle receded with the darkness
and as a result,
everything is changed.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 23, 2017

Whether

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One world separates from another
along the subtle lines
of cause and effect.
They have coincided in thought
for a long time, and now the severance
brings astonishment

It comes down to
whether what you want
can be held hostage
to what somebody else
wants you to do,
and if it is believed
you have to pay your dues in suffering
to earn your worth for all the good you crave

Or whether you are free
to be the good you sense you are,
with no kowtow to any preconditions,
whether you must wait before you love
or whether you love first, and win the world.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 20, 2017

Coinage

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They found themselves a little reluctant
to part with their coinage,
dear bought as it was, fraught with
wrenching choices and sacrifice
and the tippy balance point
of fate and luck. They’d be happy
to give up their losses,
but maybe not their wins,
so they held on, though the corrosion
hurt them

They needed to get a sense of
what they wouldn’t lose
and what they’d gain
by letting go of all that they were grasping,
to feel, instead, the dawn upon their foreheads,
the bright glow that smoothed their brows,
the kindling excitement of laying hold
on that darting liquid light
of true worth.
Then they would know,
then they could let go.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 1, 2017