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.

What you most need

Posted on by
Reply

fall birds

No one can give you
what you most need,
No one can take it away

All of the agonies
trying to gain it,
bargaining for it,
hope and despair,
All of the stories
lamenting the missing it,
All of the sorries,
good bye, don’t care . . .

All these will fall away
empty and weightless,
replaced with the clarity
true all along:

What you most need
has always been with you,
steady through all of those doors —
Tell me the riddle
and how you have answered it,
Now that you own what is yours.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 18, 2014

Night in

Posted on by
Reply

Articulated Tsunami On Base

There is a time of launching
and a time of waiting . . .
There’s a rhythm here
I need to learn to master

Quiet music and a night in
with the two men of my household
(one reading, one dozing)
may help me ease into release,
the resting, falling segment
of the cycle,
the homeward downhill coast
which takes the gathered energy
and forms it deftly
into what its hopes directed it to be

So I can wait for it,
the effort done,
for gravity will take my work
and bring it home.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 17, 2014

Picture: Articulated Tsunami Vessel on base, by Jennifer McCurdy. Photo by Gary Mirando

At Matthew’s Beach

Posted on by
Reply

lifeguard seat

The day, already splendid,
increased its level of benevolence
with the braided glow
of rippled sun reflections
patterned by gulls and geese
in intersecting circles
and in looping Vs

And with a toddler’s foreign language,
the newness of his speech
the only thing that I could understand

And with the ease of afternoon
that spilled into the evening —
mid-October
and still not cold.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 16, 2014

Morning Rain

Posted on by
Reply

window2a

In this room with the rain outside,
the quiet rain, the peaceful rain,
In this room with rain outside,
the dark and isolating rain,
I gaze upon the paucity
of my day’s array

No plans for visits
and no compelling projects,
no urgent chores, no pressing obligations,
No reason not to feel the day’s enriching joy,
no easy avenue to find it

This I know:
My life is not comprised of my to-do lists.
This I know too:
Everything that can be present is,
and nothing that’s not present now
can ever be
So though the rain may hold me back
from some pursuits,
The day will still deliver its bright fruits.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 15, 2014

Making Sense

Posted on by
Reply

dark waves

I try to make sense of things,
I weary of mazes,
My mind keeps running them anyway —
What someone might have thought,
What I did and said, and still could say
I let it go
I pick it up again

Must be a cultural chasm
with no good way to understand —
There can be several explanations
all of which make someone wrong,

There must be some way
to put my mind at rest —
I try to gather us,
I try to see us all as blessed

It comes in moments
It comes in images I feel
Where I’m empowered,
Where I can fly with what is real,
Where I can swoop along the shimmers
on the rising face of waves
And I can see the way we can connect

Not in negotiations, expectations,
Not in how our lives should intersect,
Not in what we owe or what we earn
but in the sense of home
to which we all return.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 13, 2014

By Design

Posted on by
1

leaves falling

We don’t make the sun rise
but it does
We don’t engineer
the seasons’ changing,
And even our internal tides —
our breath and circulation —
don’t depend on our arranging
(Pay attention, oh me of little faith!)

In the splendor of the rolling days,
the mist, the clouds’ drift,
the uplift of leaves driven by wind,
In the gentle hand of sun-warmth
on the dampened land
there should be evidence enough

This life of mine,
more vast than I can comprehend,
is held in order
by a force beyond my own
and all the flights I dream and yearn for
are established
not by my efforts
but by my essence,
not by me
but by the Love that holds us all.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 12, 2014

The View from Here

Posted on by
1

view from here
In the sun and wind
In the rain and sun,
Rainbow touched,
touched by inner truth

In the squares of sun and shadow
and windows framing vines and shingles,
In the quiet space between the action
we focus in

Could this tiny frame be a doorway?
Could it take in galaxies and light years?
Can we take off from here to fly infinity?
Could any starting point achieve the same?

In the rain-wet grass
and in a dog’s face
and in the happy glow
of well-contented cats
we witness grace

We will move forth from here
for here is where we are —
Our inner balance and our outward
will inform each other
forging the unity of hearts and stars.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 11, 2014

Night Farm

Posted on by
Reply

Sweet quietude, silence of the sky
A burbling fountain
sings to itself outside
Soft glow of lamps,
a place we can be warm,
a well-earned time of peace
upon the farm

Refrains of songs, the words effaced
sing low, beneath their memory
recalling something heartfelt,
some entrancing trace
of moments formative and seminal

And now the bitter tea has left its taste
with promises of sweeter dreams —
It’s time to dowse the lamp and take my place
amid the cushioned clouds of languid sleep.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 11, 2014

Today

Posted on by
Reply

meadow fence1

Today I walk
in the happiness that arises
from matter-of-fact acts,
the simple rhythm of daily rounds,
the deft precision
of casual mastery
of tasks performed without a thought
countless times across the years

Today I choose country tunes
to croon me through
this time of preparation
while the sun comes in the window
freshened from its morning wrapped in clouds
and may glint upon the unassuming moves
of boughs and beetles
and the chirping flit of squirrels and birds
and the quiet release of seeds
when they are ready
for their long, sleep-softened passage
into new life.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 9, 2014

Reclaim Instinct

Posted on by
Reply

cards1a

To reclaim instinct,
understanding certain laws
will help:
The law of sacred trust,
The law of wonder,
the law that everything that’s real
is holy
and will fill its perfect purpose
in the ever-evolving
fractally refining
all embracing and enfolding
infinitely intricate
web of life.

©Wendy Mulhern
October 8, 2014

photo of two cards from Mellissae Lucia’s Oracle of Initiation deck