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.

Patience

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plum tree

Go easy with the plans.
Grand plans can crash
through the fragile screens
of our connections, the web
with which we anchor our experience.
They can crash through
the wispy wefts of imagination,
the ones we use to build our vision

There is a place to plan big,
but then we must come quickly down,
for seedlings have different needs
from saplings, which have different
roles from trees,
and fruition requires
many conditions
to come about

You can imagine an orchard and a harvest
in an instant
but how to make it grow
robust through all its stages,
through the years —
more than big plans,
that is what we need.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 9, 2015

Your Worth

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outreach

Your house doesn’t matter,
Nor even (or especially)
the coral construct you have built
from all your interactions,
all your habits of relating,
all your skills (or lack thereof)

Your living self is found
in the act of darting out
from that hard castle,
making the bold or resolute
(or kind, compassionate)
leap into the space outside your fortress

That’s where you find love,
that’s the compellingly lovable
essence of you,
irresistible, sensitized, delicious —
That is the truth of you
that really feels,
that loves, that heals —
That is your gift, your soul,
your worth.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 8, 2015

Tough Redemption

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This poison
has brewed a long time
and it has been spewed
on us before
but the concentration
of bitterness at its target
still surprises

Is there healing for this, even this?
Is there a way to grant permission
for the righteous spite
that eats away, finally, at itself,
to simply be set aside?
— A hold so tight, a sea so deep
that even this one
would be compelled to let go,
to let Love take over?

And what of me?
Can I find a safe harbor to offer
in my thought,
for this one’s homecoming?

©Wendy Mulhern
August 6, 2015

Stripes

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stripes

I stepped into a long dark stripe
where it seems to have been
a lonely journey
down the shadowed canyons of my thought,
along the ever-stretching landscape
where I have held myself
trimmed to the wind of years,
beating my course
in its ragged tacks,
undercurrents pulling me sideways
as I strive to bring myself
to the place where I can see progress

It’s a wearying perspective,
not one in which I choose to stay for long —
sun stripes, too, can make their mark
across my vision.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 5, 2015

Song Waves

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hands together

When I started to sing
(my voice pulled up by the enticing
echoes of the underpass)
I found the sound was bound
to the memory
of how last night
it entwined with others,
rich tones rising from us,
curling around and drawing forth harmony,
long lush locks of song
like dark, smoky-incense scented hair,
like arms embracing, foreheads touching
and the primal coil
that rose up through our centers,
feeding us from the earth.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 4, 2015

photo by Edward Mulhern

Divisions

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richmond driftwood2

Some of these lines
were drawn a long time ago
and which side you were on —
bumbling, refined,
golden-crowned, pariah,
may or may not still hold sway
within your mind

I’ve been surprised at times
to see how little difference
they have made
along the longitude of lives —
ways I’ve shined anyway
(despite predictions),
ways I’ve failed to thrive
(despite achievements)

Some of these lines
are drawn daily
in the shifting sands of internet
and in our thoughts —
benighted or enlightened,
savvy or snookered, blessed or damned

They could criss-cross us
into tiny boxes,
or perhaps we’ll see
there are so many that they cancel out
and we’re just standing,
feeling alone but really
right next to each other
on the ever-tousled but resilient shore.

©Wendy Mulhern
August 3, 2015

Because how else?

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Holly's creek2

What if that inner elixir,
that euphoria,
that quality of the peak moment
we hardly dare hope for
is just a glimpse
of our natural state,
the fullness we are made to ride on,
the flight we are designed to soar in,
the heights on which our natural home
is settled?

What if every moment
is a launching off point,
a way to get there,
and there is no pedestrian
in between
waiting for goodness
half-living state of being
in our true existence?

©Wendy Mulhern
August 1, 2015

Of Spheres

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face tree2

Oh, the world is vast
and sometimes we can glimpse
how we have chosen
one small part in which to run our circles

One small set of intersections
with one small set of others,
of whose lives we see
only a fraction

And we assume others are foreign
or we assume they’re the same
and never see the whole of them
and scarcely see
the grand rolling
that moves us all, in which
all our orbits are one.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 31, 2015

Borrowing Home

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Holly's cottage2

We come to this place
that is so full of home
that we can bask in it —
soak it in, feel royal,
receiving the gift of everything
that has been tended

Lush lilies fragrance their gratitude for water,
mint its gratitude for wind,
Water of the creek sings sweetly
down towards evening,
my feet, wet and cool
beneath their shimmer

This place is home —
Not ours, but enough its own
to richly share,
make us rest easy
in the bounty of its essence.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 29, 2015

Mill Creek, Holly's

An Angel

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an angel

Well, I asked for an angel
and it came streaming in,
bright and searing as molten glass
but cool, like crystal water.
I felt it fill me from the inside
(slowly, for my need was great)

It said, This is what you are,
this is what feeds you, this is
your comfort — this is how you know
you will always choose life,
always choose the vital, vibrant surge
that puts feet on mountaintops
and gives them balance
in the brave curve of waves,
gives form and purpose
to wings riding updrafts

Nothing can take this away from you
or anyone else. Nothing can obscure
its presence. And the right angel
will come to everyone who has a need,
shining, from inside of them,
each one’s truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 28, 2015