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.

Beam me up . . .

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The place beneath my breath today
is full of lights
Brilliant as pointillist dots
that seethe and swarm and dance
and form a scene
too close for me to see
But when we sit together
Lights reflecting lights
and multiplying
Then the scene appears
So clearly scrying
That which lifts us up
and sets us flying
out beyond old limits, fear defying

So many lights! Lighter than air
Light enough to lift a whole dream
into lucidity, light enough to stream
through solar systems
Light enough to beam us
Beatific
Pulsing clear and true
across the night.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 12, 2012



Serving Light

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In this temple of the dance
You can put off your shoes
and join the sacred rite
Enter anonymous into the holy trance
to be a vessel, bearer of the light

(You’ll choose it for the way
                                        the light transfixes you
         Fills out your being, flowing from inside
                   against your skin
                                              suffusing you
         until you glow and radiate
                       and float in brilliant bliss
                 across the room)

Moving then in service to the light
Your eyes can touch another’s, and ignite
The signal can be passed from hand to hand
Each one who joins will cause it to expand

You may come back to find your boundaries shifted
Your thoughts now finer, softer, lifted
Buoyant, like all things light has sifted
You’ll see yourself anew as blessed and gifted

(Not that you ever have to look at it this way
This is the work, but it is also play!)


©Wendy Mulhern
February 10, 2012



Thirty years ago today

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(To Edward)

Thirty years ago today
in Philadelphia
I awoke to a quiet that told me
snow had fallen
Magic blanket that kissed the ground
and faded
in time for me to take
my one-pedaled bicycle
and ride (in my grandmother’s skirt)
to a dance I had never attended
where, in a mixer
your eyes twinkled

So I came and talked to you later
leaning against the wall,
standing by the chair where you sat.
Unpracticed and hopeful,
I asked you about yourself
Dazzled . . .

Together we had enough money
for two Dr. Peppers
which bought us a table at Carney’s
and time to talk
Our voices alive, our hands animated
Leaning towards each other —
Intentional community
Bell curves, affinity . . .

You drove me home
(my bike in the back)
Our parting kiss held a promise
“I like your ideas,” you said
thus assuring that I would take interest
The rest, well
The rest was destiny.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 9, 2012



Love is a Decision

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Feelings are so fickle
Love is much more than that
Love is a decision

You may wander
into the room of oneness
where you see the wonder
of infinite connection
You may want to match
all your points of unity
To line them up
one along another
and follow the diverging vectors
out to new dimensions
broadening the scope of who you are

You may try
to anchor down your feelings in reality
Negotiate a steady reciprocity
And if you don’t succeed
or if you do but later it becomes unsprung
Your feelings will not hold you there
They turn around, or simply float away

Love is much more than that
You may wander any day
into a room of knowing oneness
Love is the decision
to stay.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 8, 2012


Idols

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Winds of Spirit
Sweep my thought
It’s time to cast out idols
Those who ask for time
Those who ask for blood
Those who ask for tiresome daily ritual
Who say they have the power
to save my sorry life
or, if I fail to worship,
occasion my demise

But they know nothing, and their mouths can’t speak
The life they offer is anemic, weak
And Spirit shows me, right here, what I am
Exposing all their noxious threats as sham

I will not worship
the god of appearances
I will not worship
the god of social norms
I will not worship
the god of shopping bargains
I will not worship
the god of health concerns

Winds of Spirit, sweep my soul
for I am made to worship 
what is true and whole
That frames the space for all that’s free and wild
And holds us each as Life’s untrammeled child.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 6, 2012

(background music: Max Richter, “Haunted Ocean”)

The nature of my needed lighter touch

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(in nurturing the music in my son)

Today I saw music
as it lit
(iridescent angel)
on the tip of sound
Tracing its bright melody and swift delight
Sending its rich pulsing through the ground

Today I see that music
doesn’t come at coarse commands
of sharp regimentation
nor years of dogged discipline and work
For, sunken under critical dismissal
How can the magic of the sound emerge?

But rather, music rises from
the gentle kiss of close connection
of the grace that is one’s being
with the grace that is the song
A lighting in the joy of it
A natural touching down
A cross-time current drawing out the tones
of all that’s beautiful in kindred souls

My job then: to protect
the sphere of space in which the music can appear
To let it grow by feeding it
with light and approbation
so it’s free to flit and choose to land right here
Where its reverberation will be clear.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 4, 2012



Deliverance Prayer

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Deliverance Prayer (background music “The Blessing” by Isaac Shepard)

Bring my soul up out of Egypt
Walk me step by patient step
out of the patterns that enslave me
Release me from the lockstep
that doesn’t look
that is afraid to seek the kinship of a smile
 
Teach me to spin out on the leaf edge
of the wind
and twirl into the knowing
of the infinite variety —
Intricacies which Life has ever blessed
 
Let me no longer follow
the commands that run them over
that allow us three or four straight norms at best
Unclamp my feet from marching
Free my toes
to find the subtle footholds
midst the wildness of the river
 
Free the rivers, too
and let us all please tumble brightly
down the perfect, wild, unchanneled 
course that we were born for
Let us know each other 
deeply, truly, freely
 
Bring my soul up out of Egypt
That I may worship
My Good.


©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2012
 
photo by Edward Mulhern
 

Waltz Time

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I was dancing with my darling
The night they were playing
That beautiful Tennessee Waltz
And you know how it goes
Well, we stepped on some toes
But we’re certain it wasn’t our faults.

For we swung round and round
Round and round, round and round
Till the ceiling spun into the walls
And though we heard people swear
As we crashed here and there
We hardly even noticed their falls.

I was dancing with my darling
The night they were playing
That beautiful Tennessee Waltz
Till they cleared off the floor
And showed us the door
And brought all our fun to a halt(z).


©Wendy Mulhern
Spring, 2009



Opinions

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Having an opinion about everything
May be a sign of loneliness
Like playing cards with yourself
Everything finished, nothing waiting
For input from another hand.

Having an opinion about everything
Makes it harder
To find a match
Since meeting point for point
At every tooth of thought
Would be required to turn the key
To lift the latch.

Alas for you, then, who collect
Large bellies of opinion
That block your movement
And mistake correctness for dominion

Here is your hope:
Opinions can be left behind
You can abandon them for love
And thereby liberate your mind.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 1, 2012


Soporific Rain

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Soporific rain
Robs the morning
Of its earliest pursuits
Yet the sweetness
of the night remains
Wraps itself around my dreaming music

Languidly we move
There is no way
The clock can catch us
in its marching regimen
We’ll slide in languid sloth into the day
Let later light, in its own time
attract us

The day has duties that we dare not shirk
But we can meet them softly, without stress
Yes, we’ll take on all our needed work
But through a film of rain-kissed happiness.


©Wendy Mulhern
February 1, 2012