The heaping apple cart
tips over, the rolling hopes and expectations
jostle and fall,
bounce along roads,
lost to us now
We can’t even begin
to gather them back,
and the cart is broken anyway,
one wheel following the apples down
careening and ringing like a coin
And it makes no sense to us
to go back, to start over —
What would it be to us, at this point?
So in the aftermath
we wait to be lifted,
our lives to be borne
along a different arc.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2018
We will walk out of that house
and maybe leave the sadness behind,
let it become the emptiness
that calls out to another family
Let them imagine
filling the space,
growing up into it,
finding its secrets
and making their own
while we walk
into our new life
surprisingly unencumbered.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 24, 2018
Peaceful as evening,
as a fire-warmed house
and brisk fresh air outside,
low crescent moon
among the branches
Peaceful as being clean
after a hard day’s work,
this glow has settled over me
It lets me know
there never was a way
I could fail at my life,
foolish though I may have been,
innocent as I may ever be
All I’ve been given
was given with love,
and I have received it
with enough grace
that I can feel where it comes from.
I can receive it
as deeply as this peace.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 22, 2018
What does it mean for us,
this mode, where every day
feels like the weekend?
— a weekend that we’ve filled
with many tasks, a mode
of casual forgetting
what any other sectors of the world are doing
It feels like play time —
playing house, playing
let’s figure out how we’ll live,
let’s make new path habits
for our movement
At some time we’ll need to look up
and reconsider where we fit in,
how our days contribute
to the greater good. For now it’s something
to just be happy
as we work these little problems out.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 16, 2018
We have moved from the place
of hopeful milling about,
of waiting liquid at the lip
of some great movement
(the general goodwill of our presence
bright enough to make us feel at one)
Almost unthinking, we have plunged
along the run life set for us —
maybe we thought it was a choice,
perhaps we only noticed
by the coursing of our fluids,
by the pounding force
of that which bore us,
that, indeed, we’ve moved along
And that the quiet pool
in which we hoped and waited
(and chafed at our incompetence
to stir it up)
will not be seeing us again
for a long time
Who knows where all the others are
and where their rapids bear them
and if we’ll meet again,
changed and unchanged
at the waiting sea?
©Wendy Mulhern
January 1, 2018
There are ways these days
in which I feel older,
the tones of my chords
now including sixes, sevens, nines
There is a darkness on the undersides
where previously unknown fears
have flared and charred,
thereby disarmed,
but taste of fire remains
There is a softness now
to my approach, my certainty
is firmer, but its segments shorter —
I look more humbly for direction,
I take stock sooner
to adjust my course
The memory of dipping into tears
is closer to my eyes
and what I care about
is closer to the surface
but more than ever
runs clear and deep.
©Wendy Mulhern
November 25, 2017
Down close to the bone
the things that so distracted us
are gone — the posturing,
the quid pro quo, the stature earned,
the balance due
And the essential fluids —
the love, the tears, the blood connection,
run near the surface. We forget
what we were thinking about,
caught up in the current,
dopplered in the moments
as time stretches out,
the silence at end of day
echoing back,
drawing us
into its close circle.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 25, 2017
As suddenly as the turn of a day
the things we used to see in you
are gone — you are
an egg, an infant,
a night sky,
the things we think of you
no longer filtered
through the lens of our perceptions,
no longer judged
in the tally of the game
In this transparency
we see you pure,
untouched by all we knew of you
and all you knew of you as well —
you roll out of your form like liquid
ready to collect
in a new chalice.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 23, 2017
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
It’s not like I’m leaving,
I said, though by some counts
I was already
long gone
It’s not like I could leave
the new and old nets of care,
not like I could stop loving
Just that the goals
here in this rarified air
have nothing to do with
what used to possess me
Just that my time is spent
along a different vector
and the measurement
of what is worth my doing
has completely changed —
other than that
I’m just the same.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 11, 2017