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.

Colors

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I like
the color that shows
between my toes
the warm burnished glow
of wood tone touched with orange light
which also laps its sumptuous tint
across my instep
and licks my toes, at their curling tips

No color stands alone
They all throw their reflections on each other
I see the orange, the green, the red
silent and smooth, caressing every surface
I gaze, transfixed
at what I would have called one tone
But they are many
All mixed
Repeated on my feet, the door, the wall
Each different colored thing
shares the same palette
to harmonize and unify them all.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 20, 2012


Prayer for Now

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In the deepening clarity
of your light
A new conception dawns
upon my sight
My focus shifts —
a sharper definition —
A measure of the pressure lifts
and I feel richer

There is no mindless wave
No storm
to roil me in its sharp relentless flailing
There is no course that I must follow
leading through a time of pain and ailing

The now belongs to you
And so, as well, to me
It is my nature to express it fully
Your law is steady, true
My being — peaceful, pure and holy
And all of my perception
must feel this and conform
My times are yours
and it’s your love
that holds me hale and warm.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 19, 2012


Seeking Peace

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Time to let the clamor cease —
all the chatter, all the different voices
who insist they have a right
to say their piece
Claim to speak for formidable forces

No
They don’t have a solution
They are only looping
words to give illusion of some substance
a sense of presence out of much rushing
But there’s nothing
Nothing true in anything they say

Spirit, tonight
You take over
Burn your clear light
through all my mental clutter
all that complains and mutters of discomfort
all that claims decline and disappointment

Instead, Spirit
You speak for me
You bear witness to the one
that you created me to be
Brimming with your power and your light
Shining forth your calmness through the night.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 18, 2012


Contact Improv

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I took a class today and yesterday in a dance form called contact improvisation. One of our teachers said it always feels for her like a metaphor for life. I felt this to be so:

All that went before
belongs to us
And we can move
in the way of early life
Draping, oozing
Traveling along an impulse
that moves through bodies
as it moves through space
Wave on slow-cresting wave

The movement opens us to mystery
The fluid way to find our way in
Into the place of curling and curling
where we return
to begin

We start to feel
the coil that winds us
find its way to spring
We start to live
the settled surety
of this aliveness
Always knowing we belong.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 17, 2012


Cradling Prayer

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Arms of Love
I see
how your hold on me
and on this house
so gently cradles us
and so allows
the meek and sweet emergence
of every heart’s desire
and each extending outward
of what we glimpse we are
Which, with the simple screen of your attention
You nourish and augment
While all our grinding efforts
and the fears and thoughts that block us
simply fall away into the void

And in your arms
we glow, we shine
Safe in this hallowed place
we snuggle in
and then reach out
resplendent in your grace.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 16, 2012


New eyes

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Here our new eyes
recognize
(a coming into focus)
things we never saw and scarcely sensed
How things before deemed unrelated
coalesce

So much here to see, to learn
New systems to divine, discern
New thoughts to send and watch return
So many new conclusions

A thing we’ve tried to sense by feel
which now our wiser eyes reveal
A new take on what’s solid, real
and what is just illusion

Our old eyes took in objects
Our new eyes reckon forces
and links and currents that connect them
to their power sources

So though we view the same terrain
our sight will never be the same
effected by a simple change —
the shift in what we note and name.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 15, 2012


Prayer for myself

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Fear not, little one
You aren’t responsible
for imaging yourself
It’s not your thoughts
that make you ill 
It’s not your thoughts
that make you whole
It’s not that you must find
some secret button to control
the things you feel and manifest today

The Love that heals you
is its own bright, steady source
It reveals you
and sets you on your course
And you can feel
its tender, cleansing touch
You’ll know it’s real
You’ll know it is enough
Fear not, for every cell of you is held
in perfect calm, 
serenely peaceful, well.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 14, 2012


Turbulence

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So I want to tell you about this
This catching of my heel up
in the turbulence
The drag I felt
The downward pull so strong, so fierce
I thought it would engulf me

I want to tell you because then
I saw your face
I thought of how you’ve spoken
of waking to a sense of dread
I thought then
that I maybe understood

And when I took myself in hand
Began the fight
I felt you there
For you have fought for this before
So as I fought
I fought for you as well:

No, I won’t be taken in
I won’t succumb
I won’t allow the dread to win
in me or anyone
I’ll stand for me, I’ll stand for us
and when I overcome
I’ll bring the sweetness back for us to share.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 13, 2012


Seeing each other

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We come here in our chosen roles
Whatever we’ve decided to present —
The selves that we’ve assembled to display,
The stories propping up our self-esteem,
Our plans of how we’ll move and what we’ll say

We come here hoping
what we’ve made ourselves to be
will be enough
And that some transformation
will reach us through our tedium of stuff
We seek a blessing
while doubting it is something we deserve
We keep on guessing
what course will make us feel alive, secure

But Ah —
Despite ourselves
(and everything we hoped to hide,
so clearly seen by everyone who’s hiding)
Our precious souls shine through
And these
These souls, so holy
So wholly free from all regimes
that we or others have devised —
Since they are here
There’s nothing else remaining.
Like dust, like ash, like smoke
those old self-constructs blow away
And so we see each other as we are.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 12, 2012


I Am

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If indeed I am a galaxy
in this broad space
My care embraces much —
Planets in their orbits
and the dance of stars
and all their swirling movement
ordered by the law
unerring and eternal
of I Am

I Am speaks in calm and potent clarity
Nothing moves outside its present current
Everything within it wheels
in sparkling and majestic power
Everything is cared for and is held

Its course projecting outward
Its harmony unchallenged
The waves of pulsing energy
defining its domain

And I need never think
that I am weak, inconsequential
A pawn in chess games
moved by meaty hands
For if I am a galaxy
My center spins out worlds
that fill the grand design 
this truth demands.

©Wendy Mulhern
November 11, 2012