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D. L. Emblen, sand, in English Clear filters

RomanticD. L. Emblen

Souvenir

In an abalone shell I see opalescent sounds and shapes, sunsets, heron plumes, beach fires. I see smoke compacted into panels of pearl, gems from a hidden beach and the swelling breast-line of that beach. And when you dip it full in the surf And hold it quietly in close-cupped hands until the sand settles, I see your oval face, solemn and sweet with the mystic meeting of woman and sea.
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Foot of Grand Avenue

Our street emerges from the vast expanse of continent, somewhere east of Quincy Street, from mountain pass or flat plateau or narrow dried-up river-bed that leads to Texas and the Dakotas and Philadelphia, from rain-bright highways of the middle States, rutted Georgia roads, from shining, twin-streaked railroad tracks, from a never-never land of politics and visions, from a people too far apart to know each other ,and living too close together for tolerance. Our street has to be as wide as three normal streets with the traffic it bears, of slow-moving memories, of racing, honking ambitions that rely upon their horns rather than their brakes for safety,
CheerfulD. L. Emblen

Playboy

A small dog on the beach, the long, deserted beach of Neptune Place, where thick flat rocks lie buried in the sand, tossed ashore, abandoned sculpture from an unknown island. The wind has driven bathers from the surf, from the sand bank, from the porches of homes along the street, and the small dog runs in perfect freedom down the hard-packed sand. He chases seagulls and curlews and sandpipers, barking and grinning, showing off his vibrant, frantic body to the waves, wheeling from one shrill-voiced bird to another, like a man with many loves.
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

A Song for Peaceful Folk

Let us sing a song for peaceful folk, for the unmurdering few. They live on a flat piece down by the bay, with a view of water, their place grown around with berry vines and gangling tomato plants. They spend their days on the sand or hoeing the grainy California soil, and their nights staring at flat white moons that linger in their region. The sea is at their ear, the dust from the field sifts gently over the threshold of their open door, they are kind to wandering dogs and to small boys who come in at noon, seeking oranges.
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Fascination After Death Symbols

Why do I return each time to this sand coast, where figures of manta rays are hand-carved deep into the rocks and brittle lobster claws form necklaces along the beach? What is there to be sought in waves and coves and slipping cliffs, and miles of hard-packed sand as smooth as any highway? Each night upon the point I see the sun disintegrate, a slowly spreading pain of yellow sky and inflamed sea; each day, when foreheads of the rocks cast shadows full across the beach, I stare upon white boulders buried in the cliff, like skulls imbedded in a catacomb. And when I walk from shore to surf, beneath the eyes of hooded cormorants,
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Medanos Point

Between this tongue of sand and sagging piers across the channel, all things pass that enter Mission Bay, all boats and rafts, dredges, driftwood, clots of shining seaweed, all fishes, shells and crabs, every cube and mound of sea that rushes in and spreads out shallowly between the points of land. Twice each day the new tide carries still another unclaimed freight of creatures, the food of creatures and the seed of them across the clean-swept bottom sand. Every night the tide and wind work, flooding in and scouring out, and this has been going on for centuries. If Medanos Point had eyes, its low sand dunes would quiver constantly with memories of strange and lovely forms of life,
AnxiousD. L. Emblen

Low Tide from Crystal Pier

Flat as a dish, the sand hard-packed and shining extends from shore to surf-edge, further and wider with each half-hour of retreating tide, until the bathers look like dolls bobbing about in the mounds and sheets of moving water. The lifeguard stares and squints into the sun, it is hard to tell a lump of kelp from a swimmer's head, and there in the black-tarred piling of the pier, many a small life might scream for help. How would it sound, here in this warm, concave afternoon, with the sea-air filled with the barking of dogs, shouting of children, squealing of girls, blare of a radio, and the long, continuous thunder of the sea?
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Scene

In the first of the morning, after the night-long sighs of the sea's sweeping the beach is a virgin place where you walk slowly, knowing that your's is the only trail of footmarks down that shallow, shining slope. North and south the unmarked sand turns slowly with the curve of the continent, dazzling the eyes with whiteness, confounding the eyes with a miracle of cleanliness, baffling the little man on the beach who has carried with him all his life the incredible litter of cities, roads, rooms and unwashed places.

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