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.

On the bus

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On The Bus (Background Music: Max Richter “Horizon Variations”)


On the bus
I look at you
and you, and you
and think of you as loved.

I notice, suddenly, how cute
you are — those shoes
and how your feet slip into them
That chin, that slight tilt of your nose
And you, that face, that’s smiled
so many times, that has such memories
within its lines
Could be your smile right now is from the thought
of something twenty, forty years ago . . .

I do it as an exercise
I think of you as loved . . .
I find a smile has settled
on my face
And now, a visual litany
a thought parade of those I love
Recites itself unceasing
in my mind

A treasure, this
Well worth the weight of carrying
Indeed, it carries me
with all the energy I need
into my day.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 5, 2012






This body made of thought

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In this body made of thought
Made of moving, intersecting vertices
Made of whorls of cross connecting vortexes
There is a place unutterably still

A furry animal may curl and rest
So soft, so trusting, so at home
While outside, body moves
As mistress of the winds
Interchanging energetic waves

This body made of thought is hard to size
It sinks into the earth, it kisses skies
It moves with and creates the winds that rise
It’s everything reflected in its eyes

While on the inside, concentrated quiet
A weightless place, where every forming impulse
floats
before its launch in integrated motion
and after it’s received back to its home

It is a new anatomy
What book has shown us this?
And yet we saw it
And we felt it
And we named it what it is
And now that we have named it
We’ll see it more and more
Dynamic body made of thought
And its deep, quiet, potent core.

 © Wendy Mulhern
March 4, 2012



Fifty years

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A half century
isn’t even half a dream cycle
for a rock
which may sit impassive
or be carried
or be dropped
where, if it’s reencountered
it will be the same

But in a half century
a forest can swallow a town
that has been abandoned
Push up trunks through old foundations
Cover up the markers with its leaf fall

Fifty seasons, fifty rounds of rain and wind
tracked across the land
Recorded in the memory
of tree rings, river beds
and consciousness
Fifty years, each singular
And at once the same

And if we rise
and travel through
a cycle of awareness
coming back to where we see the whole
Then fifty years is ending and beginning
A season in the journey of the soul.

© Wendy Mulhern
March 2, 2012


Unhooking

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To fly free
you must release yourself 
from every hook

The meat hooks
that strung you up in helpless fear,
that said you were unworthy
or somehow flawed —
that what you’re good for
hung on what the judge decreed,
or what somebody else would pay

The fish hooks
where you took the bait
of acquisition
self improvement
hot pursuit of things to make you more OK

The cockleburs
all the little irritations
where you thought if things were only different
you could make your way

Each release will be a healing
Each closed wound will bring you strength
and let your spirit range a little further
coming back with joy
to urge you to continue
to claim your stature of infinity.

© Wendy Mulhern
March 1, 2012



Emerging

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Gaze into the atmospheric eye
Until it draws you in
Drives you through its shadows
Where the forces push you
Downward, onward
Through the sheath of rain
Into the after-mist
To float in distant gathering of light

Choose your transformation
Any one will do
The dreaming earth
will softly turn
beneath her blanket
But for you
wide awake and streaming through the changes
it will be
Initiation into mystery.

© Wendy Mulhern
February 29, 2012



After Healing

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After healing
When the skin is so new
So pink
When the soft breath of every air current
kisses it, wakes it up
You may be cautioned
not to touch the spot too much —
Fresh blood not far below the surface

After healing
When sobs have ceased
And breathing is now smooth
When eyes have cleared
And hope and peace and shifted paradigm
have stilled the turbulence
You may be cautioned to be quiet
Not to think about the story now

And yet the urge to stand up in surprise
To run, to leap, to stretch out that old limb
which for so long had seemed unmovable 
May overcome all prudence
And the joy of feeling
reintegrated
fully woven into the essential fabric
of life
with every movement seamless, rippling
effortless
Will send you soaring
in the all-embracing wave of oneness

And it won’t matter
how new the skin
how recently the tears have ceased
Because the fresh source of your strength
pours in endlessly
and it’s enough
to replace all memory of the ill.

© Wendy Mulhern
February 28, 2012



Weight and Lightness

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Nothing in this world —
Nothing —
Not houses, not credentials
Not webs of friendship —
Has any strength to hold
the steady falling of the heart

They break like spider silk
against its weight
And it will fall right through
until it feels
the centered force of its own gravity
Until it slows
in thoughtful drift
and feels the atmosphere that gathers
meditatively
around its presence

Everything in this world —
Everything —
Each sense of home, each memory
Each smile exchanged —
Has grace to hold
the precious light that shines upon it

Grace to catch that light
and shine it forth
and be illuminated
Light that has no weight
That sits so brightly
on each snow crystal, each
hair of thistle down, each poised hope
that meekly lifts itself
into its own being.

© Wendy Mulhern
February 27, 2012

(background music: Isaac Shepard, “People and Puddles”)

Sinning and Rebuttal

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As I was reading over the poem I wrote today, I thought, huh, I don’t really believe that.  So I wrote a rebuttal.  In the end, I think there’s room for both perspectives:

I. Sinning

If I shoot many arrows
I will miss the mark
far more often
than if I shoot none
So much to learn:
How to align my stance
The arm that holds the bow
The one that draws the arrow back,
My eye . . .
Some of my arrows may not even fly
And some will fall so wide
you couldn’t even tell
which target I had tried
The ones that land in the intended haystack
will be my early victories
and I may hit the target by and by

They say the verb “to sin”
derives from archery
and means “to miss the mark”
Well, let me sin, then
and often
and wildly
Let me fall colossally
if that is what it takes
to live a life that zings
that’s vibrant through and through
If that is what it ultimately takes
to be true.

II. Rebuttal

The sinning poem assumes
That we are separate from grace
And must attain it incrementally
By many times of falling on our face
This is a thing we’ve been so deeply taught
It’s hard to separate it from our thought
Hard to imagine lambency, perfection
Or certainty, or peace, or clear direction
And yet, if once we’ve felt the light arise
That lifts our heart from sorrow into joy
Delivers praise and wonder to our eyes
And liquid harmony into our day
We can believe that even without work
We can stride forth at once and hit the mark.

© Wendy Mulhern
February 25, 2012





Imbolc

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I wrote this poem on a bike ride near the beginning of the month, when an unusually balmy few days appropriately heralded the seasonal return of the light:

Still water of the winter river
Deep moving but surface smooth
Clear reflection with a subtle shimmer
Brown, bare trees thrust into blue
Moon ghost floating in a cloudless sky
Sailing low, so pale, alone
Bikes and skaters glide on by
Through air that’s soft and warm — sun owned
Its scent enticing us to dream, to yearn:
A day to celebrate the light’s return.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 3, 2012



The worth of a life

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What is the worth of a life?
Is there a metric for this?
Consider the sun on the water
The sparkling path
which always presents itself
right where you are:
Each sparkle is for you—
the meeting of light with your eyes—
Though others see sparkles too,
they aren’t the same ones that you view.

What is the worth of a life?
As if you could separate 
One life from all others—
From the sun’s sparkles, isolate one
Take it away from the sun . . .
What is the worth of a life?
There is no measure for this
No way the question can make any sense
It’s worth everything that there is.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 23, 2012

(background music: William Ackerman, “Anne’s Song”