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.

Need

Posted on by
Reply

I think I’ll just stay here forever
if I can remember to –
here in the release from all dark thoughts,
here in the regimen of
everything defined by its essence
and not by projected lack

Need – not as what falls short
but rather,  what waits to bless:
needs to be witnessed,.
needs to bring us along
in the bright gift it’s been designed
to give us,
needs to shine forth like a sun,
needs to bring life

I’ll just stay here –
I have to remember to,
to see another’s need and supply it,
dancing in showers
of resultant good.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 31, 2022

A thought

Posted on by
Reply

Maybe I’ll change my ways.
Maybe it’s not enough
to do the same thing day after day,
because of some agreement that I made
with no one, really,
a thing that may have had some worth,
but now its value is declining

Maybe it’s time to forge a new way,
to force me to consider
what I’d need, and how to work it,
set my feet to ground, here,
just as with all the things
I’m learning how to do –
to have my outcomes be
the gift that’s now required,
and what is not so
can fall away.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 30, 2022

With Approbation

Posted on by
Reply

I won’t quibble over whether
the way you’ve parsed things out
matches mine

What matters to me is that somehow
you’ve made space for joy to bubble up
within your structures,
and you’ve made a place
to honor enduring value,
to make people feel at home
and also seen, and also loved,
and so encouraged
to stretch into their greatest being

When you do that I can see
that paths you make for others
are ones that you can also use,
and so you stride forth free
bringing glory into all your days.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 29, 2022

River

Posted on by
Reply

Words may slow down
but the flow of meaning
glides on immensely,
sparkles appearing like bright insights,
its volume, its movement, entrancing,
and challenging to comprehend

Where it all comes from
and where it goes
may require a rethink
of what things are made of,
may introduce a deepening
from mystery to wonder.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 28, 2022

Purify

Posted on by
Reply

I can purify myself
without making myself wrong
at any time  – not in my past,
not in my dreams

It’s just like cleaning house – the shelves
are not wrong for the dust upon them –
quick swipe of cloth affirming their substance
and they are clear

I can purify myself
without making others wrong
or extra right – it’s like cleaning my glasses
so I can better see
the nuance of people’s hearts,
the colors of their souls.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 27, 2022

Into the gold

Posted on by
Reply

Every pen must dip into the gold,
whatever truth it wishes to elucidate  –
somewhere it must gather light
through which the elements are seen,
the power to propel the story

Every life is understood by light  –
they can’t be seen in any other way.
Then let me judge them true
and let me tell them as they are,
and dip into the gold to share their story.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 25, 2022

Things to put into the same box at end of day

Posted on by
Reply

Wood grain on cedar boards
curving parallel,
path of cirrus clouds across the sky,
the shift in and out of dream
after a day’s work outside,
the transition from maroon to pink
in peach and plum blossoms  –
not the same but similar
in the poignancy of their pale colors.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 24, 2022

Commonality

Posted on by
Reply

If you consider
what you are made of
and what the day is made of,
and laughter and hope –
what they are made of, too,
you’ll start to see a deep congruity

If you notice earth,
and light, and time,
and life and song and sky –
when you see their commonality,
it certainly will move your thought

And as for wars and rumors of wars
and scarcity and trauma  –
let us take what we are made of
and use it as a light to guide our way –
let us hold it high,
each one for each other,
and let us all together
walk away.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 23, 2022

Remorse

Posted on by
Reply

Can’t leave them even for a day,
for days will try, like seeds,
to stick together –
you think you have just one
but it was two or three,
enough,  at some point,
for the soil to dry out,
and what had been eager and healthy
last time I looked
has completely shriveled up –
small thread where once a stalk was

When I came back after that one day
(or was it two or three?)
and saw them languishing,
I squirted, a long time,
with my spray bottle,
hoping they still had the structure
to take it in, hoping the soil, too,
would hold the moisture

But fearing I’d been fooled
as with one fairy kingdom day
that lasts for years
and let them die.
I’m sorry. Tomorrow
I shall see if they revive.
Tomorrow, maybe,
I will try again.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 21, 2022

Retrospective

Posted on by
Reply

Again I see I haven’t changed
(this observation, too, it seems,
I”ve had with equal puzzlement before)

Here I was thinking I’d come so far,
so many steps on the relentless road,
so many lessons,
so much left behind,
so many strengths newly accrued

But now I see that I was writing
about the same things years ago,
exclaiming over these same revelations
and views I was delighted to outgrow

I could be rueful,
or I could conclude
my wing tilt is designed for updrafts  –
it’s in my nature
to feel like flying,
a habit I instinctively employ  –
the sense of gain is not illusion really –
it’s just the uplift of my native joy.

©Wendy Mulhern
March 20, 2022