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.

Thermal Mass

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In this shared center of ours
there is a warmth
stored from holding hands,
and all those confidences,
all the smiles and laughter
and deep recognition

It is a warmth
which, in the cool of evening
radiates a comfort
that draws us ever more together

We will use this principle
in our design —
the one that offers home
for many people,
the one that uses what we are
to generate what we can give
and multiplies what we can give away.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 13, 2013


Desire as Prayer

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The strait and narrow way
is made entirely of yes,
and so, to know my yes
is my salvation

Desire is prayer,
and here is my desire,
uncensored and unspoken,
only understood
in the resolution of my heart,
the longing of my soul, my lips, my skin

Here is my prayer
answered in the gravity of being,
the seated ground, centripetal cohesion
in which I am aligned with all I am

Though I may have no words
or even images,
no explanation of what this might be,
I feel it here, with all of my existence:
Prayer is answered;
this desire
will keep on guiding me.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 12, 2013


The way it has to be

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Life is life —
in every place it finds itself,
it has one goal:
to live —
And living is the grace
of making more life,
more branching life-ways,
more ways more life can thrive.

You are life,
and you have always, always
let yourself be borne
along the course
of Life’s enduring flow,
effortless, inexorable
in your resplendent gravitas

No false stories
can divert your motion,
compelled, as you are
by Life’s law:
You will grow,
and you will bring with you
lush gardens,
rich communities,
deep fecundity
of soil and seed —
so much fruit will come
so naturally, from what you bring,
from your saying yes
to what you are.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 10, 2013


Structures

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Let me release myself
from structures that have washed away my depth —
the headlong chutes 
of expectations and assumptions,
and criticism’s unforgiving hardpan.
Let me take time
for Life’s slow flow —
luxuriating stretching of connection —
nourishing exchange of living substance.
Let Life’s structures grow
according to the rules
that Life alone can set
and let me fill my tiny place
in this vast net
that holds us with a closeness
that we’ve always craved,
for here, in Life’s embrace, I will be saved.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 9, 2013


Doors

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There’s much more room
here in my mind
than I thought,
for any one of these doors —
any one of them! —
can open,
and each one opens to infinity.

This room I may have thought
was my perimeter —
closed doors marked as places I can’t go:
people I have deemed unlike me,
people I don’t know —
I can open these doors
(forgiveness somehow seems to be the key)
so all that light
floods in

And where before
I was blocked off,
now I have a vast world to explore.
Love, as it turns out,
is not linear —
it radiates
in an expanding sphere.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 7, 2013


Yes

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I say yes
to your innocence,
Yes
to your innate beauty,
Yes
to the rightness of your purpose.
Yes
to the clarity
with which your essence —
from the sub-molecular on up —
informs your wholeness,
impels your action
in the perfect dance of service
where you feel
so providential,
so propitious,
so graced to be able to give
that which enables the loop of life
to thrive

I say yes to you
and nothing —
no phantom shadows of supposed necessities,
no lies about your substance or your motives —
can blind me to the truth of who you are.
I say yes,
and in this vast permission
there’s enough room
for your magnificent infinity
to be expressed.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 6, 2013


Resistance

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We will slide
with the weight of water
out from the grasp
of all that sought to hold us.
We will collect in pools,
we will run in rivulets,
very quietly at first.

We will hide
in soft hollows
and be taken up by roots.
We will engage in cycles
that can’t be regimented.
We will use the tools
that can’t be taken from us —
gravity and surface tension,
super qualities inherent in our molecules.

Without our presence, all the structures —
every edifice of fear and guilt,
all the avenues of shame and blame,
all the lies that say we need their toxic brew —
will tend towards dust, becoming very dry,
will grow more brittle, and will start to fail.
It won’t be long before they blow away
and cease to plague our world.

We will slide softly
but with growing power.
We will build with what’s alive.
We’ll own our moments
and claim our hours,
and in our reclaimed truth,
we’ll thrive.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 4, 2013


A Dream

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The power started calling.
Its lines were well-developed —
vast networks underground —
and it started calling her.
Its call was stronger, more persistent,
than the voices of caution,
the voices of fear,
that said
this is not human,
you would betray humanity
to take it up.

And she knows she has to do it
so she goes —
follows its direction down suburban streets,
finds the corner place and reaches down
to heft the golden bricks.
The power comes up out of the earth
in swirls of white and gold.
A deep hole forms, and the swirls keep rising.
A woman in a windbreaker
stands beside her, resolute,
her jacket flapping in the rising of the power.
She says, But I need to stand in defense of love!
Don’t I need to stand in defense of love?
The voice says, Love doesn’t need to be defended.
She says, But I need to stand in defense of the earth!
Don’t I need to stand in defense of the earth?
The voice says,
The earth doesn’t need to be defended.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 3, 2013


Succession

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(for Edward)

In the way that ecosystems climax,
You and I are most-enduring trees,
surviving fires, holding the soil,
spreading our crowns
to shelter and extend
life’s dear elixir

And you have been
my strong companion,
filling in where I have faltered,
anchor of my habitat
throughout the years.

In the way that Life designs us —
brought forth where our purpose can be met,
So, now, I see it finds you
in the time where you’re uniquely set
to bless

It is my privilege
to witness you, and your unfolding,
and to hold with you
and keep on holding,
while all our former fetters fall away
and we stand splendid
in the dawning truth of day.

Happy birthday, love —

©Wendy Mulhern
July 2, 2013