ROLLING WAVES: watch & listen to a paen (a song of praise or triumph) celebrating the healing power that contact with nature offers us when we face difficult times…

CLICK TO WATCH A VIDEO of John Shane reading his poem about the healing power of being by the sea…

Audio of John Shane reading his poem

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In the subtitle above, you described this poem as a ‘paean’ - a song of praise or triumph..??

How is it a song of ‘triumph’, if the poem speaks so much of ‘our sorrow’ in its refrain..?

Well, ‘joy’ can be present even when we acknowledge - as a reality - the sorrow that we feel.

At appropriate moments, in confronting what we are experiencing, sorrow is a natural response to life’s difficulties, our own apparent failings, and the inevitable setbacks that we encounter in our attempts to bring meaning and order to our lives.

The poem does express a sense of ‘triumph’…it does so in that it celebrates the overcoming of sorrow, its words - both in their sound and their meaning - evoking the power of the endless waves of the ocean to soothe us and remind us that the waves of our experience in our lives also, quite naturally, ebb and flow, like the natural flow of the waves of ocean.

‘The One Outpouring’

And just as the waves of the ocean are not separate from the ocean, our small, relative selves are not separate from the ocean of the larger Self, the totality of the universe, the ‘One Outpouring’.

uni = one, single; versare = to pour forth - So, perhaps we can speak of a pouring forth of waves of infinite vibrating energy appearing as the infinite variety of forms that we perceive as a ‘world’…?

In that sense, we, as individual selves, are expressions of that ‘One Outpouring’, and our individual experience is as a wave of the great ocean of Being, a wave that like the ocean’s waves, will naturally ebb and flow.

The Sense Of Separation Can Be Very Painful

But, forgetting our true nature, we can come to feel utterly separate from all around us, and the sorrow we feel at that sense of separation can be very painful.

This poem tries to capture in its words and sounds how contact with ‘nature as-it-is’, can remind us of our own ‘true nature’ ‘as it is’, so that the false sense of separation subsides, and our sorrow is ‘washed away’.

We struggle with words to express what is beyond words, and poetry is the form of language that - even before writing was invented, when there were nevertheless a vast variety of oral traditions of poetry - human beings have used since time immemorial to try to express the ineffable qualities of existence.

But even poetry, as subtle and powerful as it is as a way of using language, can only point towards, can only hint at, what is, by its very nature, ultimately beyond words, beyond language.

‘Effing the ineffable’

And, in that sense, no matter how hard we might try in our writing to use language to speak of the nature reality itself, which is beyond language - “effing the ineffable’, as Alan Watts succinctly described his own wonderful attempts at speaking of ultimate matters in his books and talks - we can say that every poem is a failure.

Paul Valery wrote, ‘A poem is never finished; it's always an accident that puts a stop to it—i.e. gives it to the public,’ a sentiment that is often quoted in W. H. Auden's paraphrase, as ‘A poem is never finished, only abandoned’

So, I am abandoning this poem, which I think is at a stage where it can stand alone as it is.

But This Is Still Another Work In Progress

But, even though I’m ready to abandon this writing as a poem, it is nevertheless still a work in progress because I have decided that it could become a song, and I’m currently navigating the pleasures and trials of trying to write music for it and trying to find the way to sing the words to that music.

So, in view of that ongoing struggle, never mind speaking of ‘finishing’ this piece of writing, I haven’t even really abandoned it.

‘Process Over Product’

But I am someone who (as I hope to explain further in a future post here), values process over product, and the process of continuing to work on this particular piece of writing, like the process of continuing to write and share my work on Substack, will bring me closer to understanding both the art of writing and the power of poetry to bring deeper understanding of oneself, which leads to the possibility of deeper communication with others.

May you have the good fortune to have contact with nature in the coming days, and may that contact touch you deeply enough to help to release any sorrow you may be feeling as you are confronted with the endless news we receive every day about the troubled state of this precious world of ours…

JS

Below are the words of the poem, or the words of the lyrics of the song this poem may become…

(Watch this space for further developments..!!)

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ROLLING WAVES
John Shane

Come through the crazy cobblestone streets
Down to the beach where the sand and water meet
Kick of your shoes and with bare feet
Together we will the rolling breakers greet

We'll watch those waves roll on forever
In never ceasing flow
Let wind and water's whispering laughter
Wash away our sorrow

Then we'll run free along the shoreline
With heads thrown back and eyes turned to the sky
Where the sun and moon salute each other
And the circling seagulls cry

We'll watch those waves roll on forever
In never ceasing flow
Let wind and water's whispering laughter
Wash away our sorrow

Come cross the crooked crags of cliffs
Down to the harbour
Where the boats at anchor sway and lift
And together through the evening
We will wander we will drift
Into the sundown’s dying glow

We'll watch those waves roll on forever
In never ceasing flow
Let wind and water's whispering laughter
Wash away our sorrow

Wash away
Let it wash away

Wash away
Let it wash away

Wash away
Let it wash away

Our sorrow

JS