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.

Passage

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Give me another turn
let me roll in flashing silver
down the curving spiral
waterway, way of light
Let me be delivered
in the way of
shining eucalyptus limbs
wet and gleaming in the half sun
between the rain

All this is —
integral, whole, contiguous —
can’t be mistaken
for anything it isn’t
All this is
displaces
anything that doesn’t have its essence —
Uncompromising fact
whose quality
outweighs all else,
scattering it,
defining everything.
In that royal splash
let me emerge
same as I ever was.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 27, 2013


Art and Song

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Even art,
even song
Rise up from the joy of perfect systems,
echoes of the primal dance of oneness
which everything that thrives
must celebrate

Or in its absence
Art and song reach forth
like species pioneers
beneath the damaged soil
and spread their green above
to help restore that primal dance again.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 26, 2013


After you wake up

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After you wake up
you no longer see the point
of doing things senselessly,
of hauling your water uphill,
and making children sit
like monoculture rows of plants,
not touching, on the classroom rug.

And you no longer can be made
to spray the space between them
with things that kill all other plants
and break the life-engendering connection
whereby they might gain strength
from one another.

You will not force them to grow
by virtue of some outside fertilizer
which you’ve distilled and now will re-impart.
When you wake up
you’ll let them them grow as they’re designed —
a liberation that will also feel most wonderful
to your unfolding self.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 25, 2013


No Hurry

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There’s no hurry here
in the wayward wandering of bees
or in the darting flit of smaller insects,
No hurry in the dark, damp bed of seeds
as moisture slowly moves in
towards their center
No hurry in their swell, their split,
their first root sprout uncurling
Or in the turn of sun across the sky,
through soft cloud edges burning

All gifts that softly rise
against the glow of muted skies
or in the brilliance
of their unsheathed blue
know in their code
how they must grow
and so they do

There’s no hurry here:
You, too, can walk this calm,
drinking in the strength of days —
your hope, your balm.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 24, 2013


Considering Life

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Maybe
it doesn’t matter
Maybe all the howling failures
and the little opportunities
that were missed
And all the things you didn’t say
or wished you hadn’t
Were just some of many shoots
put up in hope and exploration
from some much grander system underground
its purpose irrepressible
And some will thrive
and some will be cut off
but all will serve
and in the end, like the beginning,
Life will spring forth
making pathways for more and greater growth.
And we will bless,
each in our niche in time and space
and we will know
There’s no way we can fail
at grace.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 23, 2013


Spirit Home

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This is where our spirits fly
when they need to be at home,
when they need to be seen,
when they need to stretch out
along the lines of one another,
need to glide in the steady intention
of time-lapsed clouds and plants,
ever attending the trend of our merging,
in sinuous touch of this moment emerging

This is the nest of spirit home
feathered with gifts we each have grown,
welcoming each, in touch and song,
making each shining our own.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 22, 2013


Impending Farewell

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It’s a different kind of sadness,
imagining you gone —
Not the gaping hole of
many times and talks, now missed,
But more the sense of
all we could have shared together
that we never did
and how the opportunity
will soon be lost —

A sadness bittersweeter
because lately
there have been a few times —
like pioneer species that grow in,
repairing ecosystems —
A few sweet shares,
A few bright laughs,
Some brave attempts to find again
the closeness
buried under several awkward years

And I can only hope
our separation,
like the drawn-out pauses
in a storyteller’s tale,
will pull us back together in an eager depth,
With our communication easy, broad, and clear.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 20, 2013


We Will Mend

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At some point we will mend —
it is inevitable,
it is our process,
like phloem flowing from Sequoias,
filling in the damage, year by year,
the bark slowly engulfing
all the wounds

At some point we will mend —
We will stop wearing down
the same old fruitless pathways,
stop kicking up dust,
and with it, every chance for things to grow.
We will be still, and with time,
we’ll find what’s needed
to amend the soil
and help the life return.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 19, 2013


Being Nourished

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(notes from the seventh five women gathering)

We wanted heaven
and when we gathered,
each with her desire
for healing, wholeness,
and that light-connection
which we each could feel
was what our essence craved,

When we gathered,
each with unfinished threads
of our own deepest strivings,
having gone as far as we could go alone,
By some bright miracle
and really without any of us trying,
our seeking edges knit themselves together:
In an instant,
quick as light flashing over water,
we each were whole,
we all were one,

We breathed the inextinguishable knowing
what it was like
to be in heaven —
how the strong arcs of our intention
circled one another, held us up,
how we each were lifted
to be a beacon for the others
thus fulfilling 
just the thing we needed for completion,
Thus embracing
what we’ve been and what we are becoming,
Fully tasting
what it is to be profoundly nourished,
what we’ll know to grow to
from now on.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 18, 2013


Another Fairy Tale

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They wouldn’t let her see the enemy —
Long drapes hung down between,
refracting fabric that sent the light
in all directions, so she couldn’t see
what was jabbing at her, what she
was jabbing out against.

No, it was worse than that.
If she had known there was an enemy
she would have stood up, summoned her strength,
her resolve.
This was more like something eating away
at the edges of her being,
bland nibbles never noticed till too much was lost.

Well, that’s how it was at first.
Then she stood up to fight
and they wouldn’t let her see the enemy,
until, in some last flash of survival instinct,
she stopped thrashing at it
and turned her sword, instead, against
the deceptive drapes,
sliced at them, as high as she could reach
until they started to fall,
great cascading ripples of heavy cloth,
their weight finally hastening their descent

And she saw, on the other side,
someone just like her,
lost and scared and wounded.
In stunned recognition,
they both dropped their swords,
the clanging sound still echoing
as they picked their way across the cloth
to comfort each other.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 17, 2013