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.

Borne Anew

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In these past few days
I’ve been feeling
the mysterious lift,
the suspected disconnect,
the unexpected lightness
of sensing that my life
is being steered
by some other hand than mine

And it flies high
and it is strong
and it is tender,
And I can’t imagine
what we may achieve,
But it is bearing me
upward on the currents
of infinity

And I can only let go
of the no longer catching traction
of my feet,
and hold on
to this mighty rising power.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 15, 2013


Re-inhabiting

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We will learn to walk again
among the plants,
We’ll learn to notice,
learn to know
how the light falls,
and the wind,
and how to help things grow.
We’ll learn the nets of life,
the webs of its dependence,
We’ll see how each thing
fills its perfect place.
And in that natural understanding
We’ll make room for one another,
Re-inhabiting our primal
dance of grace.

©Wendy Mulhern 
May 14, 2013


Shared Prayer, King County Jail

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After we finished talking
(in patchwork mix of four imperfect languages)
She held my gaze
and held it
till it became a carrier wave,
and lacking words,
I let myself sink into prayer.
I sent it out across the visual tone
I found the place
where we are one
I found the power
present in the infinite,
the source we share
that nothing can assail.
She nodded understanding
as if I had been speaking.
(“Estoy orando” I said then;
“I am understanding,” she replied)
and we did another round,
silent, deeper
till I felt myself changed
in the broad terrain
where we found ourselves —
knew that this was somewhere
far more solid than the stories of our lives.
“I hope,” she said, in Portuspanish,
“someday I can do for someone
what you have done for me.”
“I’m sure,” I said in Spanish,
“that you will.”

©Wendy Mulhern
May 13, 2013


Working

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I was shoveling dirt
and hauling logs
and dragging brush,
and my legs were scratched
and my shoes were full of
rotted log dust,
and as I was pushing
the empty wheelbarrow
back into the back yard,
over the dandelions 
and forest ground cover,
back between the chest-high bracken ferns,
the air spoke to me,
its sweet warmth full of spring scent
with just enough breeze to cool my face.
It embraced me from outside
and filled me up within
so my limbs felt present and comforted,
and it said to me,
“This is exactly where you want to be,
this is exactly what you want to be doing.”
I had to agree.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 12, 2013


Mycelium (and ours)

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In every interaction
I am healed:
In every interaction
I am made whole,
For this is part of me,
This gorgeous web
that reaches out to know,
to know by loving
and to love by knowing,
to heal by seeing
and to be healed
by the gift of having seen.

So we move
expanding underground to fill the gaps,
so we embrace each other
in our understanding,
So we include
everything that lives
within our circle
So we grow,
eternally enfolded
in one Soul.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2013


Comparing notes

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When we all come back
from our respective dreams,
We’ll share the things we’ve learned
You’ll say, “I’ve got this down,”
and I will see, with admiration,
how you persevered
through the long parched miles
and the floods
that took the bridges out —
How you built, with your life,
a place on that land
where lush green could return.
And I’ll say, “I’ve got this down,”
and we’ll marvel at the parallels —
All our lives
through such different circumstances
Winning the same prize
Learning the same wisdom
Shining the same truth
right through our dreams.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 9, 2013


Infinity

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Moving beyond
the common daily round,
the obligations and the expectations,
Moving beyond the thought
of what I am, or how I seem,
I glimpse that if I ever feel a lack,
There’s always infinity

Always the infinite impulse of Life,
Always the fathomless reaches of Mind,
Always the vast, unmarked terrain
of every heart

And I can move beyond
the strictures that confine my thought
within the walls of what I call myself,
and all the troubles that entails —
I have infinity,
and that will always be enough.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 8, 2013


Companioned Prayer

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Let me take you with me
on a prayer
Where we first plunge
into the wonder of our source —
The nature and the nurture of
the law that holds us
pouring forth the affluence of Life

Then in the insistent,
naturally occurring
alignment of our systems
with what always is,
we’ll feel the surging strengthening,
the calm and gentle ordering,
the unrestrained empowering
of everything we are —
Our hope, our worth, our destiny,
Our interwoven harmony,
The easy, brilliant artistry
written in the book of us
long before the birthing
of the stars.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 7, 2013


Not a foreign substance

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I am hard pressed to describe
the slow glide of leaf shadows
gold-rimmed, along the brown bottom
of the glass-smooth, shallow river

They looked like a pod of something living —
One-celled protozoa, magnified many times
They moved like a companionable
group of friends,
drifting down an avenue, arm in arm

The leaves that made them were a different shape —
Pointed, narrow willow leaves
somehow projected into near-round ovals —
And the water’s surface held the leaves so thickly
that they darted from the probing
of my curious hand,
and clung to one another
unless I lifted one
clear away

The ripples that my hand made
radiated out in rings
of gold and shadow
moving slowly out along the river bottom

In my awe and wonder
I only later noticed
from its coolness and its freshness
that this was water
not a foreign substance —
something that I know.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 6, 2013


Mourning

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“Blessed are they that mourn . . . “
Blessed am I,
for I mourn
I mourn the sense of separation.
I shall be comforted
for I shall be brought
back home.

The line of mourning
points me to my love.
My love, within me
is what holds me in connection,
Makes me one
in a bright tie
that never can be severed.
No lie
can remove me
from its truth.
Blessed am I
for I shall be comforted
before the sun goes down
upon my day.

©Wendy Mulhern
May 4, 2013