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.

Solace and Comfort

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lower stream

Ah, we pin our hopes on each other,
we reach out our hands
as if two bodies in free fall
could hold each other up

We will give solace
and we will receive comfort
but not from here —

Not where we set up the slate of conditions,
the changes required, the needs to be met,
Not in the stories that cast us so poignantly
into the dramas that make people cry

We will give solace
and receive comfort
here in the consciousness
deeper than stories,
where everyone wants the same thing —
A thing whose abundance
is never diminished,
a source whose beneficence
comforts us all.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 15, 2015

Walking the Land

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beloved land

Other people have loved this land before.
Signs of their presence,
in leaning posts and rusted fence wire
are unmistakable. And in the fact
that this is pasture — grass
must have been mowed last year

But something else calls out —
an echo of my footfalls,
generations old, perhaps,
And how this love that rises
from the land
must have captured others

They must have felt held,
just like this, in the sun, the air,
the solitude
and the quiet endurance
of all things living,
all these things that wait
for our full return.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 14, 2015

Wooden Nickels

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Bracketts winter

A friend remembers, as a child,
she once tried to give a wooden nickel
to a blind girl.
She doesn’t know why she thought
it would be fun to fool her

The blind girl was indignant,
for of course she knew,
as would we all be,
as do we all

And yet it seems so often
we try to give them to each other —
smiles without light behind them,
words without truth,
touch without
reverberation, overlap of waves,
and the profound fulfillment
of harmonic tones

We’ve been taught to pretend to be fooled
but no one ever really is:
We all sense,
at least a little,
what it is we want,
what we need to give.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 12, 2015

When You Know Who You Are

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Edward in Marcola2

You get refocused on the inside —
All the vectors realigned,
the causes reconceived,
a subtle but essential shifting
where all your elements
fit better, settle

And in the new-felt points of contact
a surprise thrill —
Enough to power
all the things you suddenly
can see you’re here to do,
enough to light your flare
so others see you
and you see them, too.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 11, 2015

Body of Movement

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Wendy in tree2

Consider my body
and how it moves —
the reach and balance points,
the arcs extended
through my spine, my limbs —
consider how it spins
and how it leans and stretches

There is no moment
when it is not made of motion.
Even at its most still,
the counterpoints of rise and fall,
of soft and taut
are what define it

It’s not a mass of matter
waiting to be activated.
It’s not comprised of elements
that might move.

It is the actual movement
as clearly defined by my thought
as the vortex form
is governed by its rippling imperative —
cohesion of the liquid
and the gravity that draws it
and the honored channels
through which it flows

My body is like that —
transparent, wave formed,
kinetic,
whirling through the dance
of present tense.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 11, 2015

photo by Edward Mulhern

Light On The Page

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wetlands2

Somewhere in between the printed words
I find myself in the velvet place
where secrets are imparted
as quietly as dew lifting

And the awareness
spreads like color
across sun-brightened fields
and joy —
like the spring trilling
of many tiny birds

So these are the promises
and this is how they are fulfilled —
in the soft silence
of becoming new.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 9, 2015

Life Work

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wetland rose hips

I start to see
my life is more
than finding ways to feel fulfilled,
more than arranging energies,
emotions, thoughts, and movement,
metabolism, focus for my days,
more than finding ways to feel OK

I was made to bear fruit.
My life feels good when,
in essential interaction,
I engage cooperation
with the life around me
and we all thrive

My life is working
when Life’s work
is manifest in me —
The works define
what I’m meant to be.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 8, 2015

Artwork

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oak in field

Reality
sets up like paint —
things are blocked in,
they change,
refinements are added
in color and shadow
and things dimly glimpsed
become clearer,
remote possibilities
suddenly seen
as the way things are
and had to be
(wasn’t it obvious?)

We walk by turns
entranced, bemused, euphoric,
through the colors of becoming
Reality
sets up like paint
beneath the artist’s hand.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 6, 2015

Mind Like a Steel Trap

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Wendy in tree

OK.
The fierce attention
called forth by this challenge
has crested,
and I feel the bead-like pulse
in my armpits,
and the sensation that
my body lags a few steps
behind my mind
so I might stumble or fumble
or mumble

And yet the pure power surge
has forged such an incisive
trail through thought
that there is no question
how I must proceed
and there is no doubt
about the force
that sears through all obstacles
and wins its goal.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 5, 2015

photo by Edward Mulhern

Fishing

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Richmond dawn

When I came back
to my old haunts
they didn’t fit anymore —
The old hauntedness
could still ring through me
but the old exorcisms
— industry, to do lists —
were completely useless
and the old stories
made me tired

I must remember
how I learned to cast my net
on the right side,
how the emanation
of Spirit within
brought forth so many
bright shining fish
full of life and the flow
of continual offering,
turning and flashing
and flocking in sweet laughter,
filling me up with
everything I desired.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 4, 2015