Through summer airt
The ascending gull
Dominates the expanse, the sea, the world
Under the blue, under clouds
Like the whitest wool-tufts,
And supreme, regal,
It soars.

All of space is a wave transfixed.

White and black feathers
Slow the ascent,
Suddenly slipping on the air,
On the vast light.

It bouys up the whiteness of the void

And suspended, its wings abandon themselves
To clarity, to the transparent depths
Where flight, with stilled wings,
Subsists,
Gives itself entirely to its own delight, its falling,
And plunges into its own passing –
A pure instant of life.

Jorge Guillen (1893 – 1984) was a Spanish poet, memb of the Generation of ’27, a university teacher, a scholar and a literary critic. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. 

How many of us can remember moments when we felt truly alive? Vibrating with an ecstatic energy of being, joy in our hearts in gratitude for life itself. This poet captures the essence of that moment as seen through the experience of the gull. A no-thinking, no-judging, no-viewpoint moment in which the center is no where and everywhere.

The soaring bird has classically been a symbol of ascension, of yearning, of returning to the Source, and is here beautifully captured.