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.

A Large Place

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When I turned back to look,
the argument was still going on
inside my head. I let the curtains fall
and walked away – no point
in going in there

Outside, summer hums –
deer with fawns, swallows,
kestrels, bees. There is room
to stretch out, find fresh perspective

There’s room inside for healing .
It is in the space more vast than summer,
than the great outdoors.
To understand the Principle
that makes me, day by day
sets me in my own large place, at peace.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 9, 2020


Here Among the Daisies

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I find myself holding
a hopeful, awkward affection
for people I have never met
whom I may meet someday

Imagination can’t provide me words,
but I imagine listening,
hoping I will catch the cues,
and hoping, too, for lenience –
forgiveness for the things I fail to see

We get a moment’s intersection
where it’s possible
that we could find
a treasured understanding.
This I hope for, but I note
that we could also miss

For my part, I will hold my doors open,
my thoughts focused towards you
and not towards me,
I’ll trust that I’ll be guided
to the right words and perceptions
to see you as you most hope to be seen.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 8, 2020

To Heather

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My song sparrow, my thrush, my swallow,
May your sweet voice carry on the wind,
May you swoop in sheer delight
in concert with your kin

Since you took off, I’ve been trudging up this path,
Sometimes caught up in overwhelming beauty,
Often looking down and thinking it should be so easy
to just leap off and fly among these vistas

But I walk – there’s plenty here,
and nothing else to do but keep on climbing –
One of these days I’ll catch the peak
and then we’ll see you maybe –
in that transfigured place where you have flown.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 7, 2020

Fledging

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The swallows may fledge
today or tomorrow,
their parents are showing them
how it is done

I relate to these little birds
doing this thing, with no prior certainty
how it will go –
to fly off a beam and the rest of the day
try to work out
how to regain your altitude

Parents and, so it seems, other flock members
swooping in close, pecking, cajoling,
big clunky humans watching and guarding,
planning to help you up if you should fail

But you made it! The tight spiral up,
one almost miss,
and there you were back on the beam,
eager to snuggle back into the nest,
everyone cheering, especially us.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 5, 2020

The Clear-eyed Stillness

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From the clear-eyed stillness
you can watch
while the whole mechanism
grinds out its tales,
ever more colossal in its efforts
to manipulate

You can see what they want.
And you can see how lost
they must be, to think they want that

You can watch them set their snare
and know you won’t step in,
and you can see that finally
all it can bring down
is its own lopsided structure

Down with a crash
that will only result
in showing forth the light,
as, ultimately, everything does.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 3, 2020

Sweet

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It is a tender time,
and the need for sweetness
may be mistaken for a craving
but it is really kindness we desire,
and the opportunity
to hold someone till all their fears dissolve,
to hold the stillness that can’t be moved
because it is everywhere,
to say good night with the assurance
of sweet dreams, deep rest,
and the splendid wonder
of an untrammeled morning.

©Wendy Mulhern
July 1, 2020

Shimmer

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In the soft damp morning I consider
(while turkeys bathe in dirt, and baby swallows
chitter when their parents swoop in)
how our whole life is just a shimmer,
just a snuggle, along the course of time

It has its arc, it has
what feel to us like struggles,
what seem to us like dramas,
complicated and drawn out

But they are just a trill, a flash,
something that comes round again,
resolves itself into the tone
of our sweet, precious essence,
triumph of a chord well played,
taste of iridescent light,
filigree of love within the song of Life.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 30, 2020

Liberation

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It takes us so long
to recognize our freedom,
so well we have been trained
to look at all the reasons we are bound,
all the chains, all the conditions,
everything we think we’d have to do
to get free

And what else makes it hard
is having no idea
how we are strung along like puppets,
prods within our heads
we’re made to think are our own impulse,
fears we’re made to hold to as our own

Yet freedom comes.
There is no choice – its dawn
has already rolled in,
the light too strong
to let us dream for too much longer

We claim the truth,
for it is ours,
and all the complex plots dissolve,
and we step out, unbound,
to claim our own.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 29, 2020

Poem a Day

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On the one hand
is the audacity of thinking
I could have something to say
almost every day

But on the other hand
is the humility
of knowing everything I share
is the fruit of listening

And the listening is not even mine –
it is given in the delight of being,
by the intricate, intimate harmony
underlying everything,
declaring itself
and causing itself to be heard.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 28, 2020

Game Over

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Take back this costume,
take back this mask –
I don’t want to play the oppressor
anymore

Take back these petty thoughts,
these grudging,.measuring thoughts –
I refuse to play along,
being a pawn,
my steps bedogged
by haunted looks to right and left,
hounds of rejection nipping at my heels

Let me evict the oppressor’s hand
from all my views, from all my actions,
let me step forth humbly
to take the brave hand
of those who, day by day,
throw off projections marking them oppressed,
showing me, as well,
how to get free.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 27, 2020