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.

True Summer

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These are the sounds of summer night
Served up in velvet warmth:
The braided rise and fall of cricket song, cicadas
The murmur of the wind, and water rolling
A clink of masts, a roar of distant traffic
The chatter of an isolated bird.

This is the feel of summer night
So full – 
My heart as sensitized as surface skin
A welling up of some sweet inner yearning
Awakened pull of tides within.


©Wendy Mulhern
August 9, 2011


True Stories

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No story is the truth
but there are true stories
If story is the arc on which you fly
some will launch you clean and true
and where you sail
will be the place you feel
the rising up of what you are
to meet the opportunity
the awesome, scary challenge
calling forth your deep integrity
A story that is true
will keep on ringing
with fractal echos still reverberating
the rightness of the patterns it’s creating
affirming you
forever reinstating
what you have always been
and now shall be
A story that is true
will set you free.


©Wendy Mulhern
August 7, 2011



A true story

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No story is the truth
but there are true stories
and this is one:
(it could be said the story is the frame)
This is the one in which
I own my name
move strongly in the archetypal power
where all particulars of who I am
can flower
with no apology, no shame
Like wings unfolding
once a chrysalis has split
They stretch and take in substance
from the sun and air
They multiply and reach
their shape still undefined
their ribs still forming
their planes coming aligned
Their strength now building
They soon will show
their bright resplendency
With opalescent glow 
they’ll carry me
No story is the truth
but here’s a true story:
To own my name
delivers me a new glory.


©Wendy Mulhern
August 6, 2011



Enough

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I don’t need your story
Your explanations of
The way you are
And why
And what it means
In terms of what you’ll be
I don’t need your stuff —
Self-constructed reasons
Phobias, reactions
I don’t need confessions
Pried with pain
From where you have them clenched
The miracle of who you are
Is enough.


©Wendy Mulhern
August 5, 2011



Morning Bike Ride

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I can be satisfied
with this ride
though the bends of the river tempted me
(Further down the trail, where the reflected riverbanks
braid back and forth against the river’s turns
their dance created
by the parallax
of my gliding bike
I, thus among them
swooping bright along their smooth dips
and the uncanny depth of sky)
I can stop here
where ducks kaleidoscope 
the mirror of the placid water
Gentle turbulence, further on
makes the reflection perfect
renders it in interlocking diamonds
gliding smoothly down
Colors shimmer, dazzle
Fireweed and roses
shine forth audacious purple and pinks
Willow limbs thrill in reflected ripple light
Precise lines of houses intersect the ripples’ circles
Though traffic-roar and sirens pierce the day
The mellow quiet hovers close
I can be satisfied
with this ride.


©Wendy Mulhern
August 4, 2011



facebook photos

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What is this urge? This longing to be seen?
The double image
—being you
and watching yourself be—
Adds desperate extra light
to the edge of your intent
If you are seen to be beloved
perhaps you are
The photo, captured and broadcast
is proof
And if you’re in enough of them
you’re safe
You won’t be fading out of view
until tomorrow.
©Wendy Mulhern
Aug 3, 2011


Maiden in love

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It slides in place
as effortless as dawn
The rising grace
each line so finely drawn
Each hue precise –
the subtle cast
of rose-infused delight
to render loveliness 
to her sweet face.
Why should we be surprised?
Does not each life
unfold its perfect pattern through its days?
As hummingbirds that hatch
in nests with spider silk and down
and grow from awkward cuteness
into darting grace
Have not these flowers opened out and opened out?
Yes, but they, too, are miraculous
as much as they are ordained.
©Wendy Mulhern
August 1, 2011


On Story

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I.
Although I know
that story is a tool
with which to carve
the potent wave of feelings
and stir and move emotions
along the course the story indicates
Today
Let me not try
to carve them
Let me not define
with story 
what it is I feel
Let the weather go through me
the rain
the strong wind
that which beats against
the inside of my eyes
And let me be
like a field
that takes in rain
lets it spread deep into the roots
Compels the sudden bloom
of countless flowers.
II.
I once said,
to be without a story
is to be without a home
and you have to go and live
in someone else’s story
a supporting character
who sleeps on their couch
and drinks their leftover coffee
before they wake up
brown ring on the cup
no choice of your own
but now I see
To live without a story
is to live
on the edge that is always unfolding
with new surprises
A story you’ve never heard before.
©Wendy Mulhern
July 30, 2011


. . . and closing

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the liquid in the petals feels the pull
and turns
a thoughtful wandering
the call to its core distant
half heard
like bells across many hills
or voices across traffic
they begin
a quiet molecule migration
and the petals close
relaxing from their urgent reach
feeling their own breath
enclosing their own scent
inward and inward
petals meet petals
in handclasp that reprises bud
though there’s enough world inside
they don’t align precisely
don’t seal
dew of day condenses and falls inward
like communion
or swallowed tears
the cloister darkens
petals press together
inward and inward
seeking internal support.



©Wendy Mulhern
July 29, 2011