“. . . Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou wert left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.

There is not room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou — Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed.”

Poem By: Emily Bronte, from No Coward Soul is Mine

Awake too early after little sleep and out into the lovely morning light. The rough seas have left so many interesting things on the beach: the first thing I notice in the light of the rising sun is what looks like a snake skin on the sand in the shape of the infinity symbol. This fascinates and astonishes my curiosity. I look it up as soon as I’m home and find that it’s an egg casing from a lightning whelk! All day I think about this amazing process stirring my imagination. I have a picture of a lightning whelk shell I took a year ago that’s being published soon as one of my post card poems in “Postcards From The Gulf.” It’s the final in the series of twenty poems and pictures. I’m trying to connect the idea of the snake like egg casing, lemony bright in the early sun, with the shell that opens on the left side. It is a wondrous day of walks: after my first, when I see all this beauty, I walk with my daughter and her friend who rise later and instead of taking more pictures I take trash the visitors have left behind on Beer Can Island. I love introducing guests to this beach. Later, I find a little while to tweak the Cherry Dress poem, thanks to a perceptive suggestion from my friend Jenny; and I open a tougher poem I’ve been working on for some time about the riptide and I move things around and trim a bit but still have not cracked this poem’s code and don’t know when I will. Still, I am very happy to be progressing through these poems and a batch is ready to submit. Most of the bird are in hiding this morning from the wind. There are so many mysterious wonders to discover.