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.

For Susanne

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cherry blooming

(from our conversation)

We come to discover
(again and again, it seems)
that there is nothing we can gain
by iron will, by lining up
the vectors and the dominoes of force,
by straining, with the tension of our eyebrows
(ache in our eye sockets from sharpness of the focus)
for what we feel is right

We learn that in our present love,
so constantly re-flooded
by new unfolding wonder,
revealings of the bud, the bloom, the leaf,
the smile, the creativity, the insight —
In this response, the love that feeds us
even as we give it,
is all the power to open out the world.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 19, 2015

This Land, This Day

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this land,this day

The tawny insects hover and dart,
the swallows flit and dive,
the turkey vulture wheels, light through its wings
showing them golden from beneath

Sparrows chase each other through the brambles
flying low and straight,
a pair of doves coo and flutter
from fence to fence

Blackbird warbles ripple the air like water,
Sparrow trills and whistles magnify the sun,
the wind teaches me to breathe
in the broad generosity
of this land, this day.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 17, 2015

Keening

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farm in fog2

There is a place for the low wolf howl,
a place for the long keening,
a place for the cry that launches itself
out of tears, after facades have fallen

It can go on as long as it has to —
no need to question the purpose
or the meaning
or if it (really now!) must be enough already

I may be howling for myself
or for the world
or for everything I put up with
but shouldn’t have,
for all the stands I didn’t take

It is a part of me I didn’t know —
Ancient, loud, flinging its sound out
Sharp enough to echo through the trees.
It frees me, at least a little,
from domestication,
from constrictions on what I’m allowed to be

It can continue as long as it needs to.
Afterwards, the horse comes out of the woods,
the bright flashing fish appear from nowhere.
I may do lucid dreaming
but this — how my creator holds me —
This is more.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 16, 2015

photo by Susanne Weiss

What is Love?

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maple opening

Love is the elemental
impulse of everything,
the kernel of desire
that seeds all life
and brings it forth,
the essence of
the negentropic drive
propelling the development
of all life forms
and the grand dance
of all of them together

Love is all-encompassing permission
for things to be
what they are,
constantly, just where they are
in every now.
Love is the joy
that celebrates each being,
the profound attention
to all the fractal unfoldings
of each entity, the delight
in the harmony of all

Love is the listening,
Love is the witnessing,
Love is the blessing

Love is cause,
Love is motive,
Love is why.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 14, 2015

Under

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Brackett shade

No answers, please —
no answers from me, anyway.
Let me go down
to that place far underneath the words
where the rich shadows
snuggle like blankets,
soft undulations of somber colors,
and the subtle hammock swing
rocks me to stillness,
weighty as sleep
tugging me deep
to where the silent waters
wait to spring.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 13, 2015

Comfort

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Ribbon Vessels Gilded and Bare

This habit of being,
of being together,
of being comfortable in contact,
fitting naturally into the curves and hollows
of each other
provides a wordless nourishment,
a sense of home never achieved
by staid convention
or polite conversation

Our bones know
this is what we need:
We put our hands together
to feel the shared vibration,
we put our heads together
to hum as one.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 11, 2015

Pottery by Jennifer McCurdy; photo by Gary Mirando

Away

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dandelions

The dandelion seeds
nestle in soft fluff for a day
before they stiffen enough
(though still soft)
to be ready

Then the mother flower reopens
and the air ruffles their fuzz-tops
and they start to realize
in this time
they belong to this air
and they will leave
(impossible as it seemed the day before)

Their contact will loosen —
they will no longer be
part of this unity,
they will be singular
and the wind
will take them away

Not this instant,
not at a predictable time
but inevitably
they will be borne
into the greater whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 10, 2015

Flood Waters

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I don’t know why I sat there
and fed myself footage
of tsunamis, and police brutality,
and travesties of justice,
don’t know why I kept watching
when up till then my day had been
so positive

I don’t know why I then got impatient
and wrote a note that brought a bad reaction,
don’t know why I seem to want
to escalate it

I will refrain. I will
take myself to bed. I will
wait until morning. Maybe
by then the flood waters
will have subsided
and I’ll see a clear path.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 9, 2015

The Valley of Shadows

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shadows

In the shaft of rescuing light, I see
I was not wrong,
need bear no shame,
for letting myself fall into shadow

I’m not expected to prevent
the cold dark spires
from passing over me,
the deepened gloom
from seeping in

It’s been foretold that this would happen
not once but regularly,
for which I am given instruction:
Walk through.

Walk through without fear:
Neither the shadow
nor the saving light
are your creation

But my feet are mine
and the light within
(though it seem tiny in its distance)
will ever seek its own
and pull me through.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 8, 2015

Confessions

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My emotion spreads over the plate
like liquid too thin to hold itself together,
It drips off the edges and streams down
sticky as heated honey

See, I am not dead,
nor am I middle-aged, middle-class stodgy.
I haven’t honeycombed my feelings off
and sealed them tightly where you’ll never see them,
so I can act like I can’t even feel them,
act so dull that I convince myself

See, I ooze, I drip —
but what good does it do me?
How will I clean this all up
and get on with my day?

©Wendy Mulhern
April 7, 2015