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.

Paying Up

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When you have to pay everything,
there’s no more counting cost,
no need, as there is no withholding

When you have to pay everything
because the cost is exactly
the whole of you,
you step across a threshold
to infinity

The things in daily life can’t tell you,
on their own, but somehow
you will come to know
you can’t be bought or sold,
can’t make a bargain of yourself,
and can’t be dolled,
and paying everything may be the price
for knowing that you always have been whole.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 12, 2022

Knowing Stuff

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Sometimes an image comes
in the colors you see
when your eyes close  –
the purples where the lights were,
the glinting nets of dark green

Sometimes an image comes
while you’re looking at something
like rain from the roof edge
dripping, bouncing its drops
into a hole it has made in the earth

And you’re looking at that
and thinking of depth,
and the infinite care
of the Life that will stay with you
throughout the gravest of stages –
whatever can show you – and you alone –
so you will see it, how it is still there

And will make sure
you come to know it
in the fully satisfying way
that it knows you.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 11, 2022

Tendrils

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A persuasion as delicate as
the scent of spring – the subtle catch
it has, on my hope, my longing –
would certainly be the thing
to lead with, the thing that would encourage you
to look up, look away
from rutted tracks, unthinking expectations

And see soft tendrils greening,
showing, by their reaching,
the existence of something we can’t see
but which they know is there
by the way the force within them
sends them hopeful and confident
to their source of nourishment  and strength.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 10, 2022

Flood Tide

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We move in and out of noticing
while the elements of the day
move from grace to grace,
sun touched trees suddenly
dripping in beauty, flocks of birds
landing and flying, singing and calling,
frogs incongruous as January spring

In and out of dream, emotion, memory,
we move in waves – our day is braided
with these and what we observe  –
sometimes they blot each other out
but sometimes they swell together,
their chorus sending us over some edge
where we float like a feather on flood tide.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 8, 2022

Path

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The way can suddenly come clear,
a path unfolding like a sash
in your mind, all the terrain
that had just been jumbled shapes
laying itself down on either side,
springing up to define
the full dimension

You can know what it is you need to say,
and what it is that makes your life make sense,
you can place your steps with confidence
and watch particulars
fall in line

This is here for the asking,
and for the willingness to let go
of all your clamped conceptions.
This is here for you, for you are forged
of that same light
by which you see.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 7, 2022

Standing Wave

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Turns out it’s not too much to ask
to be formed anew each day,
to let all my being be the fountain
of the surge of my source, all of it
determined by its power, its essence,
its choice, moment by moment

All my artifice washes away
in the first rush. I try to be tender
in teaching myself to let go
of what my fists are holding,
to let the cleansing stream
course through my fingers
and not hold anything but the experience
of the standing wave of me.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 6, 2022

Life told me

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Life told me
there’s nothing I need
to prove to anyone,
Life told me
there’s no way it can lose

What I may see as precipice,
as last chance, as desperate race,
it sees as gentle presence,
all the time in the world
and no time at all –
time for its sweet lesson,
taking us each by the hand,
inducting us into the secret
of its being all that is.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 4, 2022

Not so fast …

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The evening wind
sang sweet songs of spring,
its scent intoxicating,
its warmth causing the snow
to sink on in to the earth

But the morning rain
(which began hours before
what would have been dawn,
were it not for the soggy gloom)
was a dark reminder
that there’s still a long slog
before the winter lifts,
and we’ll have to dig deeper
to find what carries us
through the low passage
and upward and out.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 3, 2022

Daily

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I’m learning not to pine for
the big enlightenment,
the grand moment
when all illusion is stripped away

Instead I practice gratitude
for each new place
where I can be struck with love,
each small blindness from which
I can be enlightened

For there are so many!
Maybe even enough to last a lifetime  –
daily bursts of waking up
just a little bit,
daily bright joy for my new small glimpses
of infinite Truth.

©Wendy Mulhern
January 1, 2022