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.

Family Ties

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frosty leaf

We want to dissolve
all the knots we made,
all the contortions
we put you through,
all the habits we forced on you
in the twistings of our ignorant demands

We see the marks upon your posture
of all the places that we failed
to let you stand tall, and breathe free
and claim the breadth and depth
of your own being

We wish, more than all else,
to set you free —
Is there a way?
Can we simply release you
from the tyranny of our early vision?
Is there a key in giving you
what you always knew that you deserved —
the full acknowledgement of everything you are,
of your infinity, your brilliant destiny?

Or maybe
it doesn’t hinge on us at all.
Maybe you have already flown,
and the enduring truth of your nature
guides you clear and pure
and all that’s left for us
is to forgive ourselves.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 28, 2014

Post-Christmas Musings

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Christmas Tree

One way and another,
stories vary from experience:
We may ride safely in the container of
How lovely to have the children home
while our peace lies in shards,
all the comforts of home spilled out —
a thing that’s more convenient
not to mention

Let us remember
that other people’s stories,
one way and another,
may mask what they are feeling,
emotional complexities
foiling words entirely,
their need for comfort perhaps greatest
when their stories gush with
how perfect everything is,
how enviable their lives

The young man who stood in Bellevue
with downcast eyes
and a sign proclaiming homelessness
called me an angel when I gave him five dollars.
Who knows what story was there,
and what experience,
but I feel my money
was well spent.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 27, 2014

Quickening

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Katama Quickening

Now no longer enthralled
by the currency of death
we turn to the currents of Life,
the ones that surge in quick joy
and course in steady peace

How could we not know
that this has always been our strength,
always held us up

And there was no substance in the fear
or in the threat of loss the fear was using
to hold what we most love hostage

Life is not bounded
by death, not bound
by limits, not circumscribed
by ultimatums

Life rules its own realm
and we are of it —
contiguous as ocean,
encircling as sky.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 26, 2014

Christmas Eve

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Christmas Eve

Look how perfectly
(though inadvertently)
the scene has now been set:
The gaudy lights and cynically
commercialized tunes
finally driving all light
out of the celebration,
with Christ’s name now so fast affixed
to vengeful, hateful opposites
and the supported pastimes of the season
so bereft of any sense of hope

We have achieved the ultimate:
a night dark enough
for it to really matter
that truth still breaks clear,
that the inevitable dawn
of that which always draws us close,
tenderly washes us as we approach,
till we’re delivered pure
to where we’ve always been
but didn’t know,
where we are dearly loved
by our eternal Source.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 24, 2014

Biding

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Richmond beach biding

Faced with a riptide
or a vortex
Be calm —
There’s less to gain by thrashing
than by tuning in
and waiting for your moment

It’s OK
if you go down a little more
before you surface

There will be something you can use —
An eddy, or a bottom to spring up from
Or a gravitas within,
more weighty than
the surge can heave,
to separate you from the fray,
release you from its inundating force,
let you reclaim your footing
and your course.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 23, 2014

Preparation

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snow

Our preparation is like snow falling,
small flakes landing here and there,
the first ones fading, white to wet
on roofs and pavement,
disappearing silently
into the grass

Later it may thicken,
accumulation quick enough
to form a lock — crystal fingers
holding bridging structure
against the melt,

And before we know it
we may be transformed
stepping softly
into the opening world
of our next life.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 22, 2014

Winter Solstice Eve

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moon night

The longest night
comes and passes by,
Clouds scud across the dark sky,
Stars reveal that they were always here,
through the day, through the rain

Wind walks the hooded land
in its efficient stride,
Trees and chimes make comment,
Thoughts glide,
moving like the wind
along the canted
planes of observation,
ever slanting towards tomorrow
and the steady flow of everything
through the timeless changes
of ever cycling life.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 21, 2014

Advent

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adventH1a

You put out candles
to mark the advent,
You set your watch
like shepherds
for the long hours of the night
You pray, you sing,
You pause. You’ve done
everything you can.

And then Christ comes,
even before the rolling earth
embraces dawn,
before the final shiver
of the last watch,
before the time you steeled yourself
to wait

Christ comes
now as ever,
singular yet constant
glorious light —
when you most need it,
what you most longed for,
invoking your grateful surprise,
joy to your heart and your eyes.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 20, 2014

photo by Heather Mulhern

Forward

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puddle

There may be times to look back
but this is not one of them —
Not now, when the dissolving floes
are drifting,
breaking up the paths
we used to walk on

Not now, when our only hope
is in how solidly we place this step,
right here. And how attuned we are
to those deep harmonies
along whose lines
reality solidifies

This is the time to create the ways
for those who have been lost to follow,
and for all those coming up
with hope as yet unsullied
to have our boughs to twine on

In this way, we’ll weave a world
we all can stand on
and look around
in any way we want.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 18, 2014

Wasteland

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trees and wires

We could live all our lives
in suburban toyland
with no discomfort,
with our pretend jobs,
with tools that are not dangerous,
that sort of work

We could tell ourselves
there’s no reason for
that reckless longing
that keeps rising up —

We could beat it back
through shopping,
live all our lives that way
But they would be short —
We’d die of shallowness,
of not being able
to get a deep breath

We’d die of feeling no danger,
no aliveness
We’d die because fear
would come and get us anyway
in our little holes
because fear is never conquered
by running from it

We can’t live all our lives
in suburban wasteland.
Wilderness calls us
and from deep in our throats,
deep in our guts,
we answer.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 17, 2014