Verse - Inside the creative process

Okay. If you were on here yesterday, you may have seen a verse I wrote inspired by Peggy's Cove. I removed it. I really wasn't feeling it. I blame distraction by Kevin O'Leary on Shark Tank. Guy's compulsive viewing. What can I say. Anyway, I reached out for indpendent verification that it wasn't working and in a pique of contempt, I removed it. But then something happened. First, here is what I put up here on Sunday:

How strange
Those formidable
Columns of waves
Advance relentlessly
Toward these
Impassive, ancient
Scarred shores
One after
The other
Intent on
Nothing short
Of surrender
One after
The other
Reduced to
Little more
Than sweet
Slender fingers
Of clotted cream
Caressing and cloaking
This barren
Granite earth
For a moment
Before reluctantly
Letting go

Not so hot, huh? Well, one piece of that verse appealed to me. And I thought, I can do better than that. So, along came attempt #2:

The waves
taste like fear
but I remain calm

one after another
like an advancing
army they approach
but I remain calm

shatter upon contact
like sheets of glass
but I remain calm

scouring and scaring
my shivering skin
but I remain calm

the sweet succor
of foam
like clotted cream
fills my pores
my mouth
feels like
a benediction
and I
remain calm

Still not quite feeling it, but you can see what the constant is. So, we come to attempt number three. And I've put this all up here so you can see how an idea develops when allowed to breathe. I call this, La Mer:

La mer
the French call her
it sounds like
the word they use
for mother

how lovely
how apt
even though
I have no
ancestral memory
I yearn to float
and form in
her ceaselessly
undulating belly
once more

she who is
stirred by the cycles
of the gelid moon
stoked by insatiable gravity
though roiled
even now
I long for her wet
wispy embrace

even now
I long to be suckled
and swaddled
by those clean
slender fingers
of clotted cream
that tenaciously
tenuously
clutch the shore

and to know
however briefly
what I was
before I was
what I am

a sort
of reunion
a baptism
a benediction

I'm still not sure that I wound up somewhere better, but I at least feel more peace with the the last version. As I often say, this didn't turn out quite as I expected, but now you see the path I traveled to get here...