Wind blown, bright blue beach walk this morning, and the floating terrors of the sea are washed up once again littering the shoreline with their ominously fascinating blue-pink jelly body. I'm buffeted. They're buffeted. I watch them wiggling lifeless, helpless, in wind.

Awake, asleep, awake, asleep, a pattern, all night long and when I'm not sleeping I'm tweaking a poem I keep thinking is finished, and now walking, I wonder, one last time? do I have the final title, and I try one more, in my head, and nope, it doesn't work, I have the title right and when I return to my writing day the last fussy, tiny shifts are made; it's done, and soon, I'm revising another I've worked on for two years, put away, given up on; a poem from my father's Alzheimer's period, and I play with it and play, because it's a cock-eyed nursery rhyme for a nursing home, and this poem that I've really liked, even when it hasn't made much sense is finally, finally making nonsense sense that helps me shape it into done and ready.

One more revision, before the day is done, a surprise; a reach back to another dementia poem, put away. Not one I loved. I think, no, this isn't worth working on, and then, somehow, it is. It was lineated, now it isn't, and now, as a prose poem, has new life. My retreat, disciplined, productive, is nearly done.

All photos and text copyright Kelly DuMar