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.

You Don’t Have to Fail

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winter trees

You don’t have to fail,
though all your efforts
up till now, were subject,
more or less,
to the sands of doubt
which would start slipping
out and out, from what you thought
was your foundation

You don’t have to fail
though you’ve been taught
that winning is illusive,
that others may achieve it
but not you,
or that winning has to be
at someone else’s loss;
this is not true

Though you have thought
success must be a thin veneer
beneath which you’d be haunted
by the same old fear,
there is a quiet power in the peace of here:
the triumph of your being can shine clear

You don’t have to fail.
There is no failure in the web of life,
the skies, the stars —
The same is true
in the unfolding of what you are.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 3, 2014

Colors

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colors2a

I came back high
from riding colors,
swooping like a swallow
down the many currents
of perception

Feeling the excitement,
the waking up inside
of all that saturation,
steeping myself in the burnt sienna
of dried leaves after frost,
cleansing my palate
in distant sage of afternoon spruce,
intoxicated
with sun-soaked golden green
against a shaded hollow
and enchanting russet of sunset
on bare tree limbs

It was enough
to fill me up,
to satisfy an unacknowledged need
and inundate my moments before sleep
with all those combinations,
infusing me with unexpected joy.

©Wendy Mulhern
December 1, 2014

Marcola, November’s End

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The rain holds conversations with itself
and with the wind,
falling down on several metal roofs,
tapering off, then thinking
of something more to say,
The over-full river
occasionally adds a murmur

We eavesdrop for a while
inside our cozy cabin
until lulled toward sleep,
our minds washed with visions
of the beckoning land.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 29, 2014

Struggle

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Against manifest mass insanity
There’s no way to struggle,
No way to even begin a vast journey
across football fields,
across big box malls,
across miles and miles
of thickly sprayed synthetic crops
(whole towns decimated, desiccated)

Against the broadcast lies,
There is no mouthpiece big enough
to even formulate the counter-facts —
I’m rendered speechless
by having too much to say
and such a little voice

All I can do
is turn away from the whole story,
All I can do
is learn how to be real,
All I can do
is forge a new truth
from shared vision
and shared breath
and shared time.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 27, 2014

Sands of Change

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beach

I will flow into my sensing
of what is true,
I will not wait for others to go first.
I will pour like sand,
no grain delaying,
with the full commitment
of all my weight,
aware that gravity is here
and my surrender
moves me with calmness
through the changes,
and the weight of others
will be eased
into the leaning
of my willingness
to go down,
to settle
all the way in.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 26, 2014

Fountain

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fountain

Each day I live
is as dependent
on my activity
as is a fountain’s form,
whose dancing plumes
are only seen
so long as it keeps flowing

No grand success of yesterday
saves me from today,
no revelation
releases me from this day’s need
for my salvation

I fail, I fail each day
until I seek my source
which, rising up through me
along its natural course
achieves with ease
what I could not, by will or force,
comprising me for now and ever more.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 25, 2014

The First Commandment

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dawn

You are not held hostage
to the god of blight,
the god of dread and loneliness,
the one who says you are unworthy

When you are set free
There’s one imperative:
Don’t bow down to any law but good

Your goodness
and the blessedness of everything
is the one thing to hold to —
That will make you feel
cozy in the darkness
and golden in the light,
impervious to all incursions
on your inner fire,
inspired by the steadiness
of Life’s care.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 24, 2014

Anatomy of Desire

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Nov 21 sunset

I want to be astonished,
want to feel
something I couldn’t have expected,
want that awakening
into the sense that I’m
not in control, as I thought,
that some force much larger than me
is shown to have held the reins all along
so that all my assessments dissolve

Not that I crave helplessness
or even being overpowered
for its own sake,
Just that I want to be in awe

For awe impels my growth
into something I only faintly sense,
deeper and older than hope,
some destiny
worthy of my whole soul.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 23, 2014

Landing

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landing2a

They were tired of living on a set,
Tired of days under electric suns
in houses with cardboard walls
with all their plastic food and friends,
their plastic props, their plastic topics

They found themselves longing for loam
with its uncompromising scent,
and wood fire — how these things
cling to your skin and get inside your dreams —
for true work and true harvest

And ways of moving with the land
that leave little need for words,
and no time to worry at
nit-picky issues of their egos
and their relationships —

Finding their unity and their identities
in concert with the present forces
and today’s insistent needs,
the smell of leaves and rain
and the sweet falling to rest
at day’s end.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 22, 2014