I’m not responsible for showing up
for the bad dream. I’m not responsible
for fixing it. I don’t owe it
attention or due diligence –
I can let it go.
I am responsible
for my allegiance to the light of day,
I am required to let it guide
all of my perceptions, all my decisions,
feel its illumination from inside.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 7, 2022
What I say with bravado
falls hollow. And takes up space
like dust and clutter, till I clean it up,
till I abandon it for silent waiting
to hear what’s really true fill up the space
It fills with words that sing like sweet rain
(scent of cilantro on my fingertips)
and bring no sentencing, no consequence
for anything we did or did not do
They bring assurance
that we were always more than what we thought,
large as our comprehension
of our God.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 3, 2022
Let my love be purified . . .
Nothing is lost, nothing is rejected . . .
It’s not that I outgrow a former self –
all my awareness, now as ever,
centers on the light
Truth is my citadel – within it,
there’s no parade of lies,
no reign of influencers, no
hot button misdirection
I can feel its solid power
established in my mind,
spreading its sweet peace
throughout my sphere,
and in its vision,
I see things turning –
small openings of light
where things come clear.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 25, 2022
We are not made of smoke,
and so the sweeping winds,
fast shifting and insistent,
don’t disperse us
And those who wield the fans that push opinions
can’t corral us into predesigned reactions,
however much they blow on us,
however much it seems as if they can
We’re made of truth.
So whatever winds blow through,
they can’t disturb us –
can’t rearrange our shape,
can’t realign us
And this is true of everyone,
and so we stand,
when all the smoke has cleared,
exactly where we are.
©Wendy Mulhern
May 2, 2022
Every pen must dip into the gold,
whatever truth it wishes to elucidate –
somewhere it must gather light
through which the elements are seen,
the power to propel the story
Every life is understood by light –
they can’t be seen in any other way.
Then let me judge them true
and let me tell them as they are,
and dip into the gold to share their story.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 25, 2022
The eye of tenderness
can see so small
that it can unsnarl
even your tightest tangles,
and it can resolve your complex dreads
into their elements – can separate
your love from the fear of loss,
your strong desire for good
from the belief that it is doomed,
can find your core of courage
and light it up strong,
can touch your anchored peace
so that you feel it.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 10, 2022
What I insist on seeing
is the way you are embraced,
the comfort, deeper than the earth,
in which you rest
I let the fire go out,
but I don’t care.
The sun has been waking things up
and showing them why. In the way
I can’t show you
but something can.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 5, 2022
I am not confused
although the tangled weavings
of dark money
have been cast,
intending to obscure the truth
I am not confused
because the slick conceit of evil
has always been the same,
self-absolving misdirection,
naming scapegoats, casting blame
This isn’t what it looks like,
and while we could, perhaps,
go on for another fifty years
or generations, suspended
in the same lies, we also
can always know within
what truth sounds like,
what stands it calls us to,
and how it will support us
as we support it,
and how it moves mountains
and will not be moved.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 1, 2022
This is how you are vindicated,
this is how you are washed clean,
this is how you are lifted
A truth bigger than your arguments,
a goodness with no argument at all,
a love that loved you
before any quid pro quo,
and loves you now
touches down, becoming
everything you ever thought about,
all you ever wanted.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 22, 2022
You could throw some huge ball of metaphor
up on the roof, throw your speculation
out of sight,
and days later, ramifications
could come sifting down,
mundane meanings
needing to make place
for shifts in thought,
questions of what’s important
being reconsidered,
and finally things will start to settle,
maybe some truths have been uncovered,
maybe some clarified, some polished
Everyone who does literature
is trying for some such effect,
trying for truth, anyway.
It can be my job, as reader,
to receive what is offered,
to integrate it, whatever way I can,
with what I know.
©Wendy Mulhern
February 12, 2022