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.

Days like this

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Days like this,
It’s easy enough to understand
how a springing plant
can do nothing all day
but bask and expand,
reaching out the pleats
of newly unsheathed leaves,
drawing water up,
making sugar from the sun

And it’s easy to sense
that it’s enough
to lie around like a cat,
every rise and fall of breath
a purr of gratitude
for how it feels right now.

There’s a full job description
in the attention
to the precise gift
of this moment —
The need to witness it
can’t be neglected.

Days like this
It’s easy enough
to claim the task of being —
A sweet duty
not to leave undone.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 23, 2013


A Fairy Tale

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He looks at her bewildered
as if to ask,
“Why are you here?”
Her look returns the same unsaid surprise:
“I came because you called me —
Called me by my ancient name,
The one I didn’t even know
but had to answer.
I came because you knew me,
And I needed, in your eyes,
to learn myself.
I came because you needed me,
And I, I needed to be needed,
just like that.”

He shakes his head. “No,
I never called you. Not like that.
Well, sure, I find you charming,
as I find many women. But no,
I don’t have time
or strength
to hold the whole of you,
to meet your offer.”

He talks like that, 
but she doesn’t believe him.
How, after all, could he reach
so deep into her soul
and still not know her?
And knowing her, how could he fail
to be entranced?

Yet no is no
And so she knows
she needs to let it go.
She makes a sail
to catch and radiate her love.
She uses it
to sail around the world.
For what is once called forth
though left unclaimed
cannot go back,
And what has been once named
must fill its place,
must rise up in its light.
She’ll use her new-found grace
to crest the night.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 22, 2013


Healing

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Love flows in
to all the hidden places
Love’s balm,
Love’s calm
allays all fear, aligns the inner graces.
Every anxious flailing churning clamoring
is put to rest in Love’s deep-running channeling.
Only what is wholesome can grow here,
All progress so attuned to Love, 
All purpose clear.
Let me humbly move at Love’s direction,
Hallowed in Love’s joy and pure affection,
So removed from every claim of pain,
Firm and settled in Love’s holy reign.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 21, 2013


Sinking into One

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Honesty has gravity
to sink me
into the integrity
that touches our humanity,
our unity, our oneness.

Oneness is my wholeness,
Full circle for my movement,
Inclusion wherein I can know
no strangers, and no strangeness.

There will be things to wrestle with,
to floor me with their rising;
I’ll find the weird and wonderful,
enchanting and surprising;
But nothing I can’t snuggle with
when the day is done.
So, embracing everything
I learn to know the One.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 20, 2013


Prayer at the End of Days

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Spirit, be a rock under my feet,
For these sands are flowing hard against me.
Hold me with your steady hand,
Unite me with your center,
Give me strength to stand
Against the seething flood of matter.
Be so clear
That all these tidal flows
Will fail to grab me in their undertow.
Let them only serve to bring illusion down
That I may stand in freedom
Knowing Truth alone.
Hold us all, that as the turbid turbulence subsides,
We all will stand together
Seeing new, clear-eyed.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 19, 2013


Strategies

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I could go off into drift
I could let the sense of disconnect
condense,
fog up my sight with sadness,
close me in,
make me curl up into a small place
to collect the seeping darkness
in my body’s still,
to manufacture tears, perhaps
and soft howls.

I could wait there for you to notice.

It could be a long wait.

And it would start to seem pointless
after just a little while.
Plus if you did see me there,
what would you do?
I would be
one more unpleasant task,
another instance
of the universe’s obstinance
or bland indifference.

Better to laugh.
Better to consider
that none of this was made with me in mind
There certainly was no attempt
to cut me off
And maybe all of this was an illusion anyway —
Emotional hallucination
of an errant tooth.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 17, 2013


Barriers

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It’s easy for me to put up a barrier.
I can say
Here is a thing I need
And without it I can’t find
the full connection.
It can be a very reasonable thing,
A need that anyone would understand
But however compelling
my justification,
It’s still my choice.

I don’t have to let anything
be a barrier
between me and full connection
Not my inhibitions, or yours
Not your preoccupations, or mine
Not habit, not rhythm, not time
Not species, not genus, not gender
I can run into these barriers
but I don’t have to.
It’s my choice.
Let me remember.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 16, 2013


Sisterhood

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In this moment
We know why we are here.
We don’t know what we’ll say
Or if we’ll even talk
Or if we’ll dance, or sing, or pray
And yet we sense
We will support each other.

We each will ask
For what will feed us now.
We each will find
Within our yet unspoken wisdom
The truth that meets each other’s present need.

We each will rise
Impelled by what’s required
To know our selves as capable,
As bright providers
Of what sustains us while alone
As while together.
We are, in this shared role,
Our greatest treasure.
So we flow upwards, outwards,
Splendid wings unfurled,
A sisterhood to overcome the world.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 14, 2013


Homecoming: a vision

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She makes her way along familiar streets
now rendered narrow
by the broadness of her vision.
Her light-filled eyes
scan these scenes
of her recent past
which tug up tears she scarcely understands.

Her skirt snags on corners;
She tries to pull it in;
It keeps on spilling outward
Like her love,
Like her tears.
She wants to gather all these up;
She wants them to come with her,
Wants them to see her.

They are afraid
that they have lost her,
that she won’t stay home,
that in her brilliance
she has no time to see them.

She will find a way to bring them in
She will be patient
She’ll come up from behind,
Shine through them softly
So the light they see is theirs
Rising from within
to meet her own.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 13, 2013


Visiting hour, King County Jail

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None of these restraints are what they seem:
Though we may feel the structure is
the walls and doors, the iron and the glass,
the heavy locks,
They only are projections of the barriers inside —
The layers upon layers of revoked permissions
set down since toddlerhood,
And the narrow mazes of propriety
inculcated through all our years of school,
Reared up here as final ultimatum:
Stay in the lines, or you will crash, hard, here.

But none of these structures
are what they seem.
Such a surprise to see the guards,
The sentinels of good-defined-by-evil,
Jealous keepers of prescribed morality
Receiving our sweet, wilting, proffered flowers
and stepping over
to our side.

The power of the truth within,
The still, small voice of liberty
Autopoiesis of each living thing
Must overcome these walls and set us free.
Yes, we will pray.
That’s where we must begin.
Against these odds
it is the only way to win.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 12, 2013