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.

Ribbons

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ribbons

I tried to mend the space
my knife eyes had slashed to ribbons
in their tense sweeping arcs
across the room
I soaked it in the russet soup
that floats behind closed eyes,
gave it permission to dissolve
and then re-form

The traffic ribbon cut,
in torturous red
through my psyche,
slow, intractable. I couldn’t
leave it

I tied a bow around my hopes and plans
and left them, only too aware
that any conscious effort on my part
to bring them to fruition
would have to fail.
I left them to be met
by some life force
larger and more precise
than my fumbling hands.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 21, 2014

Lyric Body

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lyric body

My lyric body dances on sound,
Skips along the logs at Richmond Beach,
Leans into the lift of wind,
Sings the tunes that rise up in response

This is the flow
of joy-impelled intent
which moves to celebrate the balances
of all that breathes in concert with the day
and all the ways it touches
and is touched

This is not the mechanism
I was taught was me,
nor yet a chassis I inhabit —
This is the one that flies in dreams
and also here, perhaps,
in the rich euphoria
spanning all my arcs,
connecting me.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 20, 2014

From the Liberation Handbook

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feet

We find that people
will heatedly defend
their right to be enslaved,
will boast of how much power
their enslaver has, compared to others,
how thoroughly they make them suffer,
how everyone should rightly
be subject to the same

We find that these
will not take kindly
to suggestions that they could be free

When this occurs,
go softly —
You’ll win no cases arguing against them.

Sit them down. Wash their feet.
Let them feel the gentleness
of your caress.
Let their toes —
just their toes at first —
stretch tender into freedom.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 19, 2014

When We Went Through

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door

We left our masks at the door —
Masks of norms, masks of respectability,
Each mask stamped from one of several molds
So each of us seemed one of many

We left our cloaks at the door —
Cloaks that hid
our light-charged ascent,
our streaming brilliance,
our quick-electric connecting essence

And we abandoned all our static stories —
Histories that marked our limits,
all the tags, the terms, the titles
all that would excuse, explain
why we were so hemmed in

And all the habits,
all the ways we framed ourselves
(and had been framed)
all the things we named ourselves
(or how we’d been misnamed)
everything we had condemned,
self-condemnation, too —
We left all that behind
when we went through.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 18, 2014

Dawn

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dawn

I give thanks
for the layers of dawning,
after dream,
in which the worry lifts, the nagging
sense of needing, somehow,
to confront the problem.

Even quite some time after
I’m well awake, another wave
will wash me — wave of relief —
for there is nothing
I need to do to solve this.

I let myself forget —
It’s easy, really,
as the dimensions of the day
crowd out the linear projections
that scratched at my perception
through the night.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 17, 2014

The Myth of Money

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Brackett's landing, fall

We’ve all spent many weary years
playing “mother may I” to the myth of money.
It’s time to stop.

Who puts a value on our life force?
On our creative impulses and actions?
Who puts a value on our love,
or on our skill, our care, our rapt attention?
Who says we have no value
except what we can monetize?

Each one of us is infinite,
Each has the power to bless,
Each one is worthy of the things we need
to keep us satisfied and well

We have the power
to draw our own true web
to join us hand in hand across the earth.
We don’t need money systems to sustain us,
for that which gives us life
gives us our worth.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 16, 2014

Holding Out

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branch shadows on rock

Let me not be fooled
by false happiness,
the narrow sense of sort-of comfort,
the condition-based, conditioned state
wherein, I’m told, I should be satisfied
considering how horrid things could be

Let me not be duped to think
I could be happy
while others suffered,
or could, somehow, deserve
a better life than others

Let me hold out for truth,
wherein the whole huge scam
of merit, fate, sin, reward and punishment
is annulled,
and we all shine forth
in primal innocence,
in native joy.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 15, 2014

For Now

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trail

I have restrained myself
from noticing too often
how close this day lies
to the one last year,
how instant the return has been
to this place in the cycle

Fall to fall, time of fruition
to the last one, things accomplished,
things which, though they’ve gone through convolutions,
and many permutations,
seem uncannily the same

I try not to mention how surprised I am
how fast the moon wanes, then is full again,
or note the blip of weekends,
one quick tick after another —
like second hands, they sweep around

As for moments, they seem mostly full
and mostly singular. They don’t roll by
as rapidly as years. That’s why I try
to keep my focus here.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 13, 2014

The True Image

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small coral nest in spring

The true image rises
maybe not because of all my efforts
but perhaps somehow related
to my attention

The true image rises
in the stillness that exists
within each moment,
where the ripples quiet
and the reflection clears

You shine it forth
to my astonishment —
This is just what I would have asked for
if I had known to

This is nothing of my invention,
nothing I could have fashioned —
This is the true image,
This is you.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 13, 2014

Vessel by Jennifer McCurdy
Photo by Julius Friedman

Cold Snap

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cold snap

The urge for hibernation,
held, till now, at bay
by so many color saturated
delightful days
receives a strong inducement
from the sudden cold —
seeping through the weave of clothing,
tightening my skin —
and the soft contrast
of the heated house,
and the early dark outside

Why not succumb
to the rumbling and rolling
sweeping world of dream
as folded and layered as covers
above sleep’s turnings,
wild as any autumn cold snap,
enticing as the blankets’ cave
of inner warmth.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 12, 2014