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.

Heather’s birthday beach walk

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Laughing on the beach
Leaning against a log
Laughing at almost anything
(A couple, comical with their dog)
It really doesn’t matter what
It feels so good to be here

Our daughter, stunning in her colors
and her smile
Our son, subtly connected
Our family, now grown,
no longer needing tight control by parents,
can laugh as equals

Walking down the beach
we stop to play
on a see-saw log
The four of us
enacting our collective balance
(me, weighting and unweighting
making the log tip
feeling the delight of flying
my shadow doing a seagull dance)

Low tide, sea wall
Stone stairs washed to slopes,
engulfed by barnacles
Rare rock crazed with cracks
with crystals growing in them
Seagull cries, and human seagull imitations
Climbing the concrete tower that says “keep out”
Walking together in magical languor
No where we’re needing to be
except here.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 7, 2012



Facing the Void

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She moves with confidence
She twirls, she beams
But when she turns to face
the empty space again
She loses steam
and rivulets of insecurity
start seeping through the seams
The gaps between perceived reality
and her most treasured dreams
Now seem to yawn
The fabric she has woven with her hopes
now seems to drift in disconnected threads

What builds her up again?
What deep, supporting truth
can she believe?
What calming voice can counteract
the howling judgment
that whistles down the hollows
of her bones?

A pause to gather courage, to rethink
and reassess the evidence
A confidant to give her new perspective
Or some kind of sign
So she will choose to rise again
and meet the challenge one more time
And this time maybe she will power through
face down the void
and forge herself anew.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 6, 2012


Beach Walk

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Bright morning
Walking on the driftwood
Walking on the sloped beach
whose fist-sized stones
roll sideways under foot
Watching rows and rows of tiny breakers
cresting in and in along the shore
Their quiet slaps then echoed in the distance
with the shift of stones —
rock on rock rocking in receding waves

Standing heron, flying gulls, ducks
bobbing out in lines across the waves
Smell of sand and seaweed, sea
Warming sun
paints with shadows on the sand behind the rocks
Scrish of our footsteps
You and I 
walk together, holding hands
sharing stories of our soul journeys
where we go alone
but come together
vectors and trajectories converging
Throwing off old baggage and untying every tether
Awestruck with hope to see
eternity emerging. 

©Wendy Mulhern
July 5, 2012


Opinions II

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Opinions are like snapshots
Frozen impressions
Maybe true in their moment
But static —
When you’re holding them
you’re not seeing
the moving truth of now

If you think that you’re comprised of your opinions,
Each time you meet someone you’ll  think
for you to get along, your opinions have to match
You’ll pull them out, negotiate
and maybe you’ll be sad
to find that no one there agrees with you

But if instead you know that you’re comprised
of the dynamic interaction
with what comes before your eyes,
with every opportunity to be amazed,
to understand and value things
in your inimitable way
to co-create the truth 
with others who are present
You will find
remarkable confluence 
of a satisfying oneness
and a lovely, bracing playground 
for your mind.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 4, 2012



View out the window

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-Maxwelton Aerie, July 3, 2012


The urgency of growth
captured in a gesture
of kiwi vines reaching —
a faint dusting of red
along the underside of a leaf
light shining through it
Given voice by the songbirds
intimate and plentiful
Celebrated by a wild profusion
of high-climbing roses
in shades of orange and yellow
More flowers as you scan —
fireworks in hot pink
poppies in peach
Pastures beyond
darkened and illuminated in patches
by dramatic skies
Everything is rising up 
in the dance of sun and rain

©Wendy Mulhern
July 3, 2012


Alpaca Shearing

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Feels like an honest day’s work
Hands dirty, clothes dirty
Body fatigued
Easy to slip from attention 
to numbness
and on into sleep

Feels good to work as a team
Never abating the pace of the labor —
Hum of the motion of sharing the effort —
till every last thing is done

Heat of the animals
Heaving and powerful —
Holding them firmly
while soothing them softly
Treat them with iron and silk

The sound and the smell of the shears
Precision and speed of the shearer
The texture and spring of the fiber
Gathered up quickly
and passed to the sorters
in grade labeled baskets
over the fence

And I didn’t feel tired till the pause
when a wave from behind me
rose up and engulfed me
and sent me to where
all the ambient sounds —
bird calls and bleating —
took on different meanings
drifting me closer to dream.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 2, 2012


The necessity of trust

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Here is the openness of trust:
that, all permissions granted,
in freedom to do anything we want,
the things we choose
will trend toward what will bless

That in the field where nothing is forbidden —
No kind of movement,
words, thoughts or emotions —
Our own divinity will guide us with precision
to grace of body, mind and interaction

Here is the necessity of trust:
Each gift we have needs freedom to unfold
to stretch out perfectly
and fill its purpose
Not from a regiment imposed on it
But because, internally
it must.

©Wendy Mulhern


June 30, 2012

Relativity

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Everything changes
No one’s sense of self is static
Each one grows
Things you were so sure
would be impossible for them
become their norm
And things you thought you’d never do
You learn 
(That’s why it makes no sense
to hold on to a past offense)

Nothing changes
The primal pattern reasserts itself forever
The track of every orbit orchestrated
The cords of union hold us fast together
However far we think we may have skated
(That’s why we recognize ourselves
in everybody else)

Never too far from home
Never too far
from where we can close our eyes
And let the scene reframe
In that bright centered place
From whence we always came
(The way of being that we always hoped to learn
And where, in soft precision, we return.)

©Wendy Mulhern
June 29, 2012


Kids playing soccer in the park

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Focus power
Focus kinetic skill
Concentrate the energy
Make it do your will
Let it return, so it can fulfill
that sense of presence
that brings you joy
though you don’t name it
nor consciously employ the game as therapy

For you it’s fun
But there is more to it
for in your sending forth
and trapping back
you have created some kind of spirit track
The vectors emanate from where you run
You and the ball and field becoming one
magically connected to your team

So suddenly I understand
This isn’t pointless playing with a ball
This is the growing practice of command:
By owning this part of your world
you own it all.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 28, 2012


Angel Wings

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As I was driving home
the sky was full of angel wings —
Angel wings of all kinds
and I 
having slid through two tunnels of sleepiness
(the first one, a battle with my eyelids;
the second, a little closer to surrender)
Was finally awake enough 
to take in their splendid spread
of grays and whites and yellows 
against the generous blue
Portending something
(I hope)
greater than another day of rain.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 27, 2012