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.

Aflatus

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sorrel woods1a

It could be called the moment
when Spirit appears on the scene —
That silent shift in everything,
where all the spaces and hollows
become more pronounced.
Things stand out from each other —
ferns in the sunlight,
waves cresting among waves,
and the whole dimensionality
takes on depth and richness
And things glisten
in the sure sense of being themselves
and being loved,
And everything moves
with a unity of breathing —
Grand inclusive rise and fall,
catching them up in its peace,
embracing them all.

oregon beach1

©Wendy Mulhern
June 22, 2014

Transfiguration

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transfiguration3a

Oh, I recognize this,
Coming, as it does,
in the rush of weather changes,
wind chimes frenzied,
tree tops all astir . . .

I don’t know if I’ve seen it before
but I’ve felt it,
The way those distant trees
(one layer behind the houses
across the street)
Were suddenly gold,
lit up at full attention,
limbs held in sudden
transfiguration
for a long moment in which
all I could do was watch . . .

One cottonwood took the chance
to dance copper and brass
instead of its usual silver,
Wildly, in full abandon,
until the glow was softly
lifted away.

transfiguration2

©Wendy Mulhern
June 19, 2014

Pretty

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brackett's trees

There’s something striking
in straight lines merged with bendy —
Tree limbs framed in window panes,
Images of houses
ruffled in the river’s ripples

I came here along the braided curves —
River, bike trail, highway rising
into overpasses, thinking
“Everything about today is pretty”

For I also thought so earlier,
Watching the rolling arc of waves,
small and glistening on the glassy water,
curling to a small break
just before the curving shore,
almost too bright to bear

We bounced small rocks off driftwood,
We spoke of things arcane and lofty,
Didn’t need to seek
the places we might disagree

(so I didn’t mention watching
dragon-headed clouds with intelligent eyes
drifting in brilliant blue
framed by my arm crooked over my face
to block eye-searing sun.)

©Wendy Mulhern
June 16, 2014

We find our way back

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benighted

We find our way back
Not by craft, not by clever planning,
Not with compasses or maps
or trails of breadcrumbs

We find our way back
Not by skill, not by knowledge,
Not with an ever burning torch
to light our way

We find our way back
by falling,
Falling into the well-honed patterns,
the steps we have invested in,
the ways we fit,
grown together day by day
over many years

So that after we have spun out,
There’s a truth we sink back into
and in our surrender
we find our way back.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 15, 2014

Benighted

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benighted3

What I figure out in my head
makes so little difference —
tenuous story
hung by flimsy threads
between the bounds of
things I don’t know anyway,
nothing more solid than
conjectures that I form
by flattening reality
to see it from my narrow point of view

See? I don’t know anything —
Nothing, anyway,
about these figurines, these tokens, this
archaic game board, with its
esoteric rules of play

I don’t know anything
so I’ll await the return
of some deeper context,
some more inclusive dimension,
some hitherto uncharted way.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 14, 2014

Weave

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weave

Flying down the warp of life
past the constant shuttle
of many colored wefts,
there is no one of them
you can take with you —
Nothing that you swiftly cross
can satisfy you
in your speeding course

Take satisfaction
in the silken strength
wherewith you are designed
and in the splendid order
of the loom
and in the dance that opens ways
to make room
for endless looping brightness

And feel yourself enfolded in the colors,
each one reliant on your clear integrity
that doesn’t waver in its steady place
within the cosmic frame
that holds your life.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 13, 2014

Early Morning Smile

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I cherish your
early morning smile,
rare as days when we can wake
to sunbeams,
hope-igniting as robin song.
We blink and face each other
and fill with light

We are here
and though chains of the day
await your donning,
we can almost see
the way they must dissolve,
We can almost taste the freedom
to live into that smile,
to let it lead us through the hours
released, at peace.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 11, 2014

The Implicate Order

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implicate order

The implicate order unfolds
in the waxing moon
and the track of shadows
across the day
and the tender individuation
of petals in their buds
and the steady resolution
in which my thoughts
come clear

And all the things I don’t yet know
remain still safe, enfolded
in the eternal order of the infinite
to come to my awareness
in the rolling presentation,
in its perfect time,
of all that’s implicate.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 10, 2014