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.

Stability

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stability

 

Spirit, save me
from the side-wards slide,
the sense of dissonance,
the double vision —
Give me a sense of me
in which I can abide,
some clear stability,
purpose and mission

I can’t bear to be beholden
to whims of chemicals,
to be side-swiped
by chained reactions
trundling through me
like freight trains
bearing cargoes of speculation

I can’t bear to see
my sweet confidence
shriveled like unwatered seedlings,
laid out along the soil,
fast disappearing

Spirit, I need your breath
to steady me, remind me
of your presence
and the anchored truth
that holds me ever more —
the centered touch
that frees my life to soar.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 9, 2014

Missed Signals

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missed signals

None of these tokens mean a thing.
They are a currency —
Sometimes they can be used,
Sometimes, also, they can be
misconstrued

A kiss, a smile, a hug,
a showing up to work,
a glance, a sigh, a comment,
the taking time
to sync up with your breathing . . .

You may want one
and I may give another,
so it would seem
our signal had been lost

But I am sure
These tokens are just toeholds
to help us gain the higher understanding —
what I am, who you are
and the bedrock fact
of our deep caring,
and the finally unerring
harmonics
in which our souls conjoin.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 8, 2014

Safety

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safety

Where can we seek safety?
Not in numbers,
not in nameless crowds,
Not in being one of many,
herded, sheeplike, following the rules —
Not everything that claims to lead
is kind
And clearly, there’s no kind of safety
in following blind

How can we seek safety?
Not in more guns,
Not in more locks and keys,
Not in protection from so-called Security
Not in turning our faces
away from strangers,
Not in buying insurance
against all dangers

Not in conformity,
Not from policemen,
Not from reliance on logic and reasons,
Only by building
through small trusts, by hand
a net of acceptance that covers the land —
a weaving us in with no outside for anyone,
no one cast off, left afar —
Then we’ll be safe where we are.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 6, 2014

What I Observed While Trying to Write a Different Poem

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At Matthew’s Beach
the toddlers in their bright clothing
converge along the water’s edge.
Constellations of families
intersect orbits

Two small girls and one mom
have pink broad-rimmed hats
And the larger girl reaches her arms
in the water again and again
making circular splashes.
The smaller one
sits in the shallows —
they both have sodden skirts

A small boy cries unconsolably
because there’s a scratch
through the picture on his bucket
And his mother won’t stop
using it to get water
to wash her children’s feet

A young man with green sunglasses
and two small boys
and a wife
addresses me as lifeguard
and I have to tell him
(as I told the boy with the scratched pail)
that it’s not lifeguard season yet,
that I’m just here.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 5, 2014

Centered

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idols

The storyteller said
that we were programmed to be slaves,
to look, for our direction,
to a god outside ourselves,
to do, at that god’s bidding,
things we wouldn’t want —
to pull out gold and leave our land crying,
and fail to see our web of oneness dying

The story offered us a key —
We could heal ourselves,
and our world, by knowing
There is no god outside
the elemental harmony,
no purpose separate
from our eternal flowing

And suddenly
We could hold the whole world
with one hand —
all the grand order spreading out
from that nexus
of understanding
we’re not outside the touchpoint of control —
This God within
is our center, and our whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 4, 2014

Feral Cat in the Backyard

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cat1

He moved into the clearing and sat
surveying the kingdom
he had come to call his own,
A place shared uneasily with others,
a place of bounty nonetheless,
And though it offered
none of the pampered warmth
of inside realms,
it was his,
And the sun kindly threw stripes of gold
across it from time to time
And there was life teeming
in the shadows and the deep holes,
life enough to hold his interest,
life enough to sustain.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 2, 2014

Suspended

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geese1

I seek an education of ripples,
of boats, of geese with goslings,
a blowing through me of sweet June wind
whereby I may be informed

The afternoon hums with people
and the chorus of suburban machines
thrashing at grass, at hedges,
Flotsam of the day, fallen in the slow river,
floats down

I am not confused
but something is unfinished —
something asking me to pray.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 1, 2014

Early Morning

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bike at Brackett's2

The sun, delaying its delivery
of promised strength,
drifts through a spread of casual clouds.
I doubt it will affect the day —
just my cold hands, in this brief moment

But it’s too early to be sure —
Sometimes the sun will gather more —
Whole sky-fulls to attendance,
drawn as they are, no doubt,
by its warm kisses,
Unconcerned (as are we all)
about their shadows.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 30, 2014

 

Inside

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pure inside2

We are all pure inside,
We are all innocent.

The raging game of blame,
justification, tallies of offenses,
indignation,
the cringing battles fought within
about the way things went
and what they could have been,
the cover stories, image and bravado
are all just cloaks
and superficial froth
that hide the truth
that we are pure inside

And some of us, for some of us
will have a miracle of insight
to find the door, to take the path,
to wend their way inside
and with their touch reveal
each other’s innocence,
releasing that bright truth
to light each other
and, perhaps, the world.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 29, 2014

“I Shall Dwell . . .”

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greenlake trees2

(questions)

Where do I live?
Do I live in dogma,
do I live in story?
Do I live in the rolling screen of memory?
Do I match constructs of my expectations
with the way things seem to be unfolding?
Do I try to make corrections?

What does it mean to live in Spirit?
What does it mean to live in Love?
Can I call this a house,
this place of comfort,
this felt experience of being loved?
Can I call this a house,
this consciousness of my delight
to stand here at the threshold
where we may see each other,
where we may meet,
Where we cross over?

©Wendy Mulhern
May 28, 2014