The words in my head
don’t need to face emptiness –
they are always ready to play
My mind fills in the images –
it can chain any two words together
and take them up the winding street
paved with tawny bricks
in the places of dreams
which may or may not be extant
in the world of my daily walk
It is only in the realm of judgment
that I may decide
I have nothing to say.
©Wendy Mulhern
March 7, 2023
After a day of distracting myself,
it’s a delicate process
to get back to the truth points
now folded under what I pulled up
spending way too long
with my old journals,
and the wordless hum of daily tasks,
but I will find them
This morning I woke up
luxuriously relaxed
from dreams of flying
and filling with sound
And I see that I was still me
back in those old journaled days
just as I was me
in those free flights.
©Wendy Mulhern
October 15, 2022
My gratitude multiplies fractally
as I consider
all that goes into each aspect –
the sounds, the words, the alphabet,
the means to write, the way that reading
throws an image straight into my thought,
full color, full nuance, full flavor,
so I can swoop along, in someone else’s
created world, without even noticing
the surface that invoked the pool
that I dove into,
and the geologic layers of technology
that make it effortless.
Most of the time
I give it no thought at all. Right now,
I am in awe.
©Wendy Mulhern
September 14, 2022
On the one hand
is the audacity of thinking
I could have something to say
almost every day
But on the other hand
is the humility
of knowing everything I share
is the fruit of listening
And the listening is not even mine –
it is given in the delight of being,
by the intricate, intimate harmony
underlying everything,
declaring itself
and causing itself to be heard.
©Wendy Mulhern
June 28, 2020
It’s too dark to see my words
but not too dark to see
how the light falls on the page,
the glow along the center line
where it slopes in, and the orange cast
of the nightlight catching the curve
It was too late to find a poem that night,
shadow shapes showing where the words were
but not enough of thought
to pull it through.
©Wendy Mulhern
January 31, 2020