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.

Ode to Improv

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In this playful place
We have permission
to ride on currents
that we surely feel
though they don’t map
on what we call reality:
A fabricated character
may still know joy, 
know grief, know glee
A made up situation
triggers genuine emotion
in a synchronistic serendipity

A lobster may engage in final banter
with one for whom she’ll be his evening meal
We’ll laugh because we recognize the truth in it
and how, for us, the lobster is so real
And we’ll love because the laughter binds us tighter
and shows us something deeper that we share
And this reality will make us richer
as we move in our quotidian terrain.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 26, 2012


Release

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No one needs to be defined
by failings, or ancestral line,
habitual smallnesses passed down
through fathers’ tone-deaf, caustic snide remarks
or denigrating tone of voice
or wordless attributions 
that would put them in a box

Each one is free
Each father free to grow
beyond the frame his father put him in
Each son to rise to fill the call
of his internal plan
Each father can release his son
from every tiresome lie that held him down
Each son can find the truth
of his I Am.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 25, 2012



After the last tone

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In the silence
after the last tone has ended
there’s enough time
for anything —
For judgements to melt
For things that were constricted
to float free
For the tension, and then its memory
to seep away

Words then impressed upon the silence
have deep weight
Don’t waste them 
for they can set
a clear and steady course
across the next cacophonous abyss.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 24, 2012


Stardom

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The sun came out at six pm
Grand, sporting brilliant blue sky
And a few gratuitous fluffy clouds
A fine entrance
escorted by strong winds officiously
brushing away the excess warmth
But it was charming enough
to warm us anyway
Make us sit and bask
if only for a moment

It is a busy star
with many others it must see
We can’t expect its glow to last for very long
and so we try not to depend on it
try not to hang on its every gesture
But face it
We are smitten
We will pine for it tomorrow
if it’s gone.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 23, 2012


Being Free

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In this weightless place
Released from all the loops of thought —
of problems posited, solutions sought —
I offer presence

In this open space
where gentle currents 
run clear and smooth
with time for many folds and curls
I yield my preconceptions

In this present grace
where eyes connect
and we have locked attentive
in a mutual orbit —
In this sacredness we move
and so we learn

Thought stilled of looping is free
to follow grander leadings
ever receiving the impulse
to show forth the truth that we are.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 23, 2012


Listening

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I let myself sink deep
into the gentle gravity
of conversation —
let the weight of listening
match the weight of words
let the chain of story
pull the meaning out
let the feeling be expressed
till it was felt

In its time, but only then
I spoke
responding not to words
but to the fundamental frequency
revealed in this space
where we walked together

So we have learned
communication —
the ready give and take
the ebb and flow
that pulls us ever closer to each other
where words become the froth, 
and understanding
is the sweet, recurrent, steady undertow.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 21, 2012



What you can take with you

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Arms spread wide, radiant face
Laughing, twirling, diving
Pulled by the music, impelled by grace
Moving at one with it, holding
true to the moment
the point of perfection
Filled up, filled out and fulfilled
in the joy of it
Never more sure of your essence, you dance
into your primal divinity
being this you for the very first time
the you that has been you forever

Afterwards, sitting alone
in the tingle and glow
that is all your cells’ memory
This is a truth you can own
Beauty has danced in you
full and enhanced by you
so now it won’t let you go
You’ll carry this mark in you
Love giving spark in you
Whoever sees it will know
This is the treasure you don’t hide away
the gift you will bring to each day.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 20, 2012

Surveying

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You can’t map this perfection
on anything less than infinity
No fairy tales —
happy ending or not —
can chart this vast terrain of love
No dreams, no plans
can catch or name it
Yet here it is

You can’t carve out for yourself
a portion you can take away
to eat alone, in some unnoticed corner
You can’t encapsulate it
in rules of thumb and formulas
for easy future access

Each time you love
you fling yourself
into the wide, unmappable
and ever perfect whole
of fully being
Your learning: not to make it better next time
but just about
the wonder of the now
Now that encompasses 
all of eternity —
Everything Life can endow.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 19, 2012



Teach us to play

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Spirit of wind and water
Spirit of dolphin, otter
Teach us to play
Teach us the readiness
in every moment
for swift and creative response
to each impulse offered
by each of your creatures —
The swoop that follows the drop
The twirl that follows the swoop
The delight of surprise
at our supple capacity
brought out so suddenly
brilliantly, happily
perfect precision and time

Spirit of song
Teach us to play life
like a flute, like a drum
like a cello
All our cells being
the deep sounding board
sending our praise to the sky.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 17, 2012


The Vision

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The way of being that I so desire
may not be all that far from where we are
—A state to reach, not waiting
but by steady practice:
the art of seeing underneath facade
to what the fact is,
seeing beyond persona to the realm of Soul
where we can know ourselves
and see each other whole

And when our countenance —
the way we feel inside —
gives up its clenched up fears
and opens wide
We’ll find ourselves
with no resentment, no complaint
No stultifying inhibition, no constraint
No more defined by blindnesses and failings
Or by the things we wish to leave behind
But by the moving edge where we are sailing
Along the wide expansion of the mind

It is a coming that cannot depend on death
but on the present power
of every breath.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 16, 2012