Timeless Failure

Over on the Adventus website just now, RMJ has some terrific lines from Carmina Gadelica, an ancient Celtic Christian text. The last section from the post he's titled The Voice of Thunder has a fairly quiet description of tha nature of Wholeness, of life reaching beyond our perceived boundaries, held in a larger unity.

Thou pourest Thy grace
On those in distress,
On those in straits,
Without stop or stint,
Without stop or stint.

Thou Son of Mary of the Pasch,
Thou Son of Mary of the death,
Thou Son of Mary of the grace,
Who was and shalt be
With ebb and with flow;
Who wast and shalt be
With ebb and with flow!

I've tried on occasion to describe what I suppose could be termed a mystical understanding, sort of a hunch or unscratchable itch somewhere deep within. I have a poem I wrote a while back which tries (quite unsucessfully) to get at that point of wholeness and peace which embraces and yet mediates between the ebb and flow. I post it here, just curious to know if it communicates anything or nothing to others. It's never felt right to me probably because the strong rhyme pattern. Such dertermined rhymes feel too formed for something so amorphous as the ocean, but also make a surprising contrast.

The truth is, I love the elusive aspect of this attempt. It's the sensation itself which defies words, and is I believe the unnameable pointe vierge of all that is... And over and over I've tried to pin it down: that very light delicacy of the gull/kite/wave thing,but it defies me. I've come up with a remarkable number of variations, each one a suprise. But each one wrong in its own way. This just happens to be the version I have on hand in my compute. I'm sure I could scramble round and find three or for other versions and they'd all be equally wrong.

Each one gets close to the mark, but even so each pushes me farther from it also. An example I suppose,(to (mis-quote Winston Churchill) in my writing and so many other things, I venture forth with boundless enthusiasm from failure to failure...

As the wave rises up from the swell
Flings beachward and then turns to foam
You're held in a moment so still
Of taking and letting go,
Just as the gull that glides aloft,
Like a kite let out on a string,
Hangs on an upward draft
Without the strain of a wing.
So too this yearning to stretch
Past the fabric of life's narrow breadth
Is countered by quick gasp for air
A sigh radiates to a prayer,
The arc from gratitude to desire
The gleam of the spark as it leaps before fire.