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.

Lessons from Trees

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A friend said to me the other day, “What if trees could only see their trunks?  That would be like us – we see such a small part of what we are, when we look at our bodies.”  Something like that.  It got me thinking, long and deeply, about what else there is of me, and how I might learn to see it.
Looking Further
Stand still and breathe
and let yourself expand
along the outer reaches of yourself
beyond your skin
The part that flies up into trees
and soars among the birds
and reaches to the feelings of another
intrepid kindness knitting souls together
You’ll find new life in moving
in the part that dances in the waves
that glint afar across the bay
You’ll kindle someones’ distant spark of hope
open in joy for having been there
to witness someone’s song-filled, fledgling flight
This is part of you 
more so than bones
more present than your pulse
The part that knows 
and guides 
and glows.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 12, 2011


On love: conversation with an angel

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You have to give up everything
There’s no small sliver you can
smuggle in, no negotiation
of the gift
Even one small grain of will
makes you too heavy to float
One condition, one demand
one holding out for some element
of your pride, or who you
think you are
will keep you down
How is that fair?
Shouldn’t love be a balance?
A matching effort, wing for wing?
If I’m giving everything
shouldn’t he give just a little?
I could tie myself in chains of giving
He could heap on more and more demands
I could devolve into a shadow living
with all decisions in his hands . . .
Fear not, my dear
The everything you give, you give to love
The gift you give is what you gain
Your love, not his acceptance, is your prize
In love, you fly
You leave yourself behind to grasp anew
all that you always were, but never knew.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 10, 2011



Vignettes from the game

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                                                                              (with commentary)
I think she’s playing me, he said
But what’s the game, and what’s the prize?
And have I even thought, clear eyed
Of what is is I’m after?
Deep within, beneath the game
The spring of strong desire is wound
We love the way it makes us bound
And we’re compelled to try to find 
The way to make our lives align
With all its pent up need to move.
He circles her, he seems to meditate
He dances with some others, but his eyes
Keep turning back: this time, if I approach
Will she allow me to come close?
And yet what leaps must land
Perhaps in some place wild, unplanned
And maybe many weary miles from home
And maybe, so the fear is, all alone
And torn and damaged.  Ah, so this is why
We stand alone and hesitate to play.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 9, 2011



The Holy Church of Hands

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Here in the silent space
between the songs
Here in the waves of harmony
within the chords
Here in the place you feel that you belong
you step into the holy church of hands.
It stands unmoved
sacred like trees
The holy church of all that you are
brought in, embraced
The holy church
of all we have never yet known
that waits within
a kernel that takes in and takes in,
infinitely,
the water that compels
all potential to expand
our hands to reach out and reach out
and intertwine
pull all into one
and fill the universe
with song.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 7, 2011



Waves like love, love like waves

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Waves are like love, in that
every molecule is connected
each one is lifted in its perfect time
no one is ignored or crushed.
Each one is needed
in its moment
to embody something greater
than it could be alone
and they move as one
though each one crests the rise uniquely
and the pulse goes through them very quickly
something far away comes near
something near can still be felt afar.
Love is like waves in that
it can cover you
and change you profoundly
and you keep feeling it 
long after the first pulse
has passed.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 6, 2011



The Perils of Complaint

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Beware of this – it is no siren’s call
but just a sorry chance for me to fall:
I see that there’s no comfort in complaint
no cozy nest of fellow mopers moaning
where if I’m hurt, or troubled, or in pain
I might find solace.  For they vie in groaning
Each tries to top the others’ doleful story.
No sympathy.  At best a doubtful glory.
So just because I hear somebody grumble
in mournful bid to gain my ready ear
In trying the same tactic I will stumble
and swirl on down in egocentric tears
It’s only upward looking that I gain release
Not in pity, but in elemental peace.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 5, 2011
As might be surmised, I had a tough day today.  Homework for a course I’m taking was unclear, and I ran into a technology glitch, and the course’s instructor responded, cursorily and supremely unhelpfully, to only one of my three emails asking for help and clarification.  I found myself less patient than usual with other people’s complaints.  But in the end I realized that I was gaining nothing by taking it out on them.




Similes

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How I feel these days might be like
the rising of smoke after a candle
twisting and bending over itself
strands dancing in counterpoint
moving outward, exploring.
Or it might be like
 the formation of a curl
 at the start of a a fern
 all the tightly wound fronds
 coalescing from nothing
an idea within the amorphous mass
shooting like a wind puff on a pond
sending its darts of delineation
down in spining spirals
 that will later unwind
and stretch out
as energy flows up its conduits
to kiss the light
 suffuse itself with native green
 embody life.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 3, 2011



Interplay

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Interplay of light
      the image of the bank
                   in counter-swirl
           against the bend of river
       trees extending down into
     the depths of sky
         squiggled by the   
                 lightly ruffled 
                          sun dusted
                                  surface.
        Interplay of sound
        a line of music weaving through itself
  invoking hums and sometimes claps and shouts
fundamental frequencies 
   enhance the sound waves
       send exquisite echoes through our bones.
                    Interplay of touch
              a wave begun with one
    goes through another
who sends it back 
in perfect tone and time
contact flowing 
    up along the skin
          and deep within
                  luxuriance of inner liquid waves.


©Wendy Mulhern
May 1, 2011



After the Competition

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“The first thing you hope
is to not crash . . .
The second
is to feel you did reasonably well
So I succeeded in both of those,”
he says,
a smile escaping,
releasing a few of the
giddy little bubbles that are rising up
making him feel light.
The scores corroborate;
something shifts and settles,
and he stands more solidly.
I too feel something –
a long, slow release –
no need to worry for my son:
grow in peace.
He won’t be tilting up his head in pride,
his hair in practiced affect tossed
nor crying in a bathroom stall
his dreams in shards, his prospects lost.
He’ll walk in long-legged, languid stride
towards his desired profession
He’ll find his way in his own time
My task: maintain connection.


©Wendy Mulhern
April 30, 2011



Body Rapture

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For the Turtle Dancers . . . 
Body Rapture
Let the body rapture
lead you out
beyond the tentacles of words
beyond the weights and measures of the mind
the body knows it loves, it doesn’t care
about constraints of boxes and conditions
doesn’t need permission
doesn’t need directions
has its own affection
makes its own connection
precisely tuned to every move and glance
The body rapture knows
love is pure enough to move you
in the deep perfection
of the dance.


©Wendy Mulhern
April 29, 2011