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.

Consent

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consent

So gently wooed we are
by quiet songs that thrum
against our bones,
through urgings, ocean deep,
that, irresistible, sweep us
into the slowly rising current

We can pretend we haven’t heard,
pretend we aren’t moving,
pretend we don’t notice
how our yearning now
has gained a little courage,
how it senses itself part of something grand
which never is delayed
and cannot be ignored

We are wooed gently
so we won’t resist
until it’s too late —
Too late because we’ve thrown our whole consent —
our hearts, our hopes, our will —
into the thronging force
that bears us on.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 22, 2015

Request

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madronas touching

I want you here
not for the tasks you do
so much as for the way your presence
settles me, gives me something
to lean into
lets the flurry of my worries
start to find
some resting place,
precipitates
some kind of peace

I want you here
not to possess you,
not to clip your wings,
but so the weight
of our shared intention
can focus, gather power
so together, we’ll have enough strength
to persevere.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 21, 2015

New

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new

This is not my dormant season:
Every day, the sap is running
smooth and cold and sweet
along my inner courses
as the fresh form swells and claims new space,
ventures out across the wheeling rays of day,
skin touched, as for the first time,
by sun, by rain, in the eager stretch of greening
that meets the tingling air

And in the unseen places
vast networks of fine and tender roots
spring out along the paths within the soil

This is how it is —
selves of yesterday
fall off like sheathes, like scales,
each day I give myself to this life.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 20, 2015

Alignment

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far oak close

I am not astonished
at all that falls away —
I have so little time to notice,
for the cause
to which I find myself inherently aligned
reveals itself so vast
that there are no edges —
just the rapid sudden rise of color,
close and quick, enveloping,
overwhelming any standpoint
that could put it in perspective,
overwriting everything,
filling me so comprehensively
that I could never want anything else,
owning me
just as (I now see)
it always has.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 19, 2015

Crucible

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far oak1

Oh, these things we are so proud of
and the things of which we’re so ashamed.
these things that cling to who we think we are,
these things we carefully arrange,
These things we call ourselves
and what we call each other
all must melt
in the rising heat of change

And what we are
beneath our self stories,
What we are
beneath all our facades
will seem a small coal
when we first see it
but we will know we must acknowledge it
as ours

As ashes fall away, we’ll see the glow,
and as we hold to it, we’ll see it grow:
It will survive the fire,
it will endure —
It may be faint as yet
but it is pure.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 18, 2015

A Great Calm

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calm

This is a great calm.
This is the calm of beginnings,
of the virgin field

This is the calm of a warm core,
liquid and unformed,
brewing place for strong motion

This is the calm
of a darkness so great
there’s no room for anything but trust

Trust in the warm core
and what forms there,
Trust in the autopoiesis of everything
Trust in the harmony to which
we all are drawn
when we leave our schemes behind
and enter the great calm.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 17, 2015

Dream Light

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froth

The light comes through
the suboceanic dream,
through folds and fissures,
growing green with distance
through the deep transparencies,
reflecting and refracting
down and down towards where we sleep

We will follow all of its lines —
we’ll call them story —
We’ll look for something
that will bring us out,
or closer to it

We’ll always choose
whichever one seems brightest
in our unceasing struggle
to find the real light,
the one whose rays
have found their way
to all these stories,
which they can be touched with
but never contain.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 15, 2015

photo by Heather Mulhern

Winter Sun

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winter sun

The arc of winter’s day,
like the early crescent moon,
is clipped — dawn comes late and cold
into the frosted town,
mist hangs, bright and pale
between the shadows

Noon brings warmth
and polished gleam
to bare tree limbs,
though the sun stays low,
the shadows still substantial

Cold will come soon —
even any moment —
when the sun slips
behind the tall, dark trees
and heads quickly
like a child coasting home on a bicycle
on the last leg towards night.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 14, 2015

Everything We Need

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carkeek7

Everything you need is here.

This is not something to talk about —
Come here:

Your eyes are half the amulet,
My eyes can be the other,
Your heart, your hands,
are half the story —
Joined, we will complete the arc:

Everything we need is here.

It takes no more than willingness,
No more than the desire
inherent in living,
No more than open presence
to ignite the ever waiting spark
that sets the current surging
on and on in affirmation
of what we’re here for,
everything we need.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 13, 2015

photo by Eric Mulhern

Waiting for Service at the Verizon Store

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The wind tunnel here is strong —
shrill blasts along the sheer and sterile buildings,
loud streaming of the ads and football chatter,
straight lines of life-suppressing roads
and matching suppositions of acceptable life-paths —
It’s no surprise we all should feel
weary, aimless, craving sugar

In this place I summon
everything alive
to help me —
the brave trees at the edges of the parking lot,
the smiles that people sometimes find,
the memory of winter reds against the gold
of winter grass
on the wise land
where we will learn to reconstruct the patterns
which show us how to live,
which give us peace.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 11, 2015

old oak