Category Archives: Earth Whispering: Poems

It’s my discipline to write a poem a day, and I post a poem here almost every day. To find a given poem or poems on a given topic, use the search bar at the right. To receive my poems by email, please subscribe, at right.

I’d love to hear your comments on any poems. To comment, click on the little speech bubble just under this text, to the right.

Equinox

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Spring steps easy
on the balance of the equinox –
this one step tips the scale
and opens up the time of daylight.

They say we will have snow tomorrow night.
I don’t believe it –
the sun so radiant
and so constant
in this stretching afternoon,
I feel it never will give up its reign

Evening, I’m sure, will disabuse me –
the wind that I have hid from
in this southern corner
(which still whistles, cools the air
around the north side)
will assert itself, and once again,
I’ll build a fire against the cold,
and we’ll work to get the trees in
before the dry season takes hold.

Wendy Mulhern

March 21, 2020

Infodemic

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Match lit, the fire flares
down tinder vectors of belief –
The dots connect
as we expect –
motivation, cause/effect

We could be caught up once again,
we all could burn,
or settle for some suffocating blanket,
or in the deeper quiet we could turn
and find a lens to see in clearer ways

The fire within
that needs no fuel,
that burns but never is consumed
can guide us now
and set us free
to shine our radiant truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 19, 2020

Mother Wave

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When the mother wave comes for you,
you will be cradled,
you will be borne up,
you will be bathed and buoyant

You will not miss
what you are swept away from,
you will not mind
how naked and how new
you feel, how far away
from your tongue are any words

When the mother wave comes,
you will delight in stillness.
all your worries gone,
your heart at home.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 17, 2020

Clarify

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I call on the ever-present
nature of all things
to speak up clearly
as the inner voice
in all of us

to let us each feel
how grounded we are
in the sovereignty
of that which is

and all these swirls —
tornados and manipulations
barking out conformity,
herding us to fear

may roar above the surface
but don’t come where we are,
don’t change a thing
except perhaps
to clarify our truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 16, 2020

On further thought …

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I’m practicing
this way to be small,
to be nimble:

to leave behind me any armature
that could be jousted at, could topple
(divest myself of it whenever it is sparred with
or whenever it kicks up the urge to spar)

to leave behind me any burdens,
any worries,
to ask the big question
that wipes them all away

and so define myself
not as a big structure
but as a small point of light,
one that grows brighter
the more that it reflects.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 15, 2020

The End of the World

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I reckon many of us
would not mind
the end of the world —

The un-quibble-able finality of it,
the sudden change,
the necessary dropping
of the hundred little burdens
we each carry through our days

The excitement of it,
the call of something deeper,
long sleeping, in our beings,
something that would rise up
if only in that crashing moment

The hope is that it would be quick,
not some drawn out monotony of suffering
(though even there we would be honed,
and even there we’d mount the struggle
to survive)

The hope is
we would see
our loved ones again,
and laugh together
about the long strange trip.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 14, 2020

Pre-Dawn

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Morning has its faithfulness,
and even before dawn
as the gibbous moon still shines,
the turkeys are set off
by any other sound — the geese,
another flock of turkeys,
tiny songbirds, the occasional duck

Even before dawn
cars and trucks are trundling
down Marcola road along the river

We are up earlier
than our rustic lives would order,
preparing for errands in town
and to get back to planting
before the rain.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 13, 2020

On Faith

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It only takes a grain,
for if you even once
sense one true thing,
you won’t forget it

It will be there in its difference
from everything you’ve ever thought,
and it will trace itself
like light lines
all along your consciousness
until you realize
this is something you have always known

It will keep claiming your attention
till it changes
all the ways you think,
till its new logic
renders past assumptions
foolish and absurd

You won’t look back,
for you will find this new perspective
so precious as to be your very breath.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 11, 2020

Openings

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Every place has an opening.
There is no scorecard
for whether you take it
or not, whether you glide over
or whether you founder

People who’ve been there will tell you
there is great value
in the most hopeless place –
they will tell you how they found a door there
thar opens unimaginable light

And some may note
the value wasn’t in the circumstance
but in its inability
(although they thought it would)
to snuff them out
and how that helped them grasp
what they are made of.

Wherever you may find yourself,
take heart. Ultimately,
there is no way that you can fail.
Every moment has its opening –
When you’re ready,
you’ll go in.

©Wendy Mulhern

March 10, 2020