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

CheerfulD. L. Emblen

Speciman

There are many wondrous fish that flash their green and yellow sides below Seal Rock, fish with luminescent eyes, with fern-like fins and fins with spines, fish with nostrils close together, bulbous eyes and cordate teeth, fish that are seen only by lantern and others that are never seen, only the soft circle splashes of their air-gulping, creatures with foot-less legs, streamer legs, bundles of arms and feelers, shovel forms in shining sheaths, sword forms and living things that drift like water-swollen leaves. And when the tide draws back,
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Art School on La Jolla Boulevard

Each young hand turns upon the pivot of a brush, moves nervously, hangs back or slashes deep into the oblong space of landscape, grouping as each eye and understanding gropes for truth and splendor, for truth and squalor in the bluish haze of morning. Each one seeking something in a scene that asks nothing from anyone. . . . faded red tile roofs, a scattered run of cars below, one by one, a row of ragged palms, like turkey-necks against a dull green mass of sea, the cliff edge and the sea itself, clouds, and blurred horizons, and telephone wires paralleling horizons.
CheerfulD. L. Emblen

My Mother-in-Law Talks to Seagulls

Mother says there are ledges full of gold just off shore, that there are rafts of teakwood, loaded with jade, floating around between sea lanes. She says that when two ocean currents meet no ship can sail there, that death and birth are hard to tell apart in the sea off-shore Each noon she shares a sandwich with seagulls on the lawn; she tells them of New Mexico, of saline flats where ancient arrowheads litter the cracking earth like shells on a beach, of Indian dances and cotton crops and moonlight through tall ash trees arched across the irrigation ditches. The seagulls nod and walk about and recall the albatross who couldn't fly, or the whale who smiled
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Residue

All forms of life serge in upon the cavern of the cliff, fish and spawn of fish, bodies of birds and seals and fishermen, twigs and pieces of broken ships, leaves, fibers, fabrics — propelled by tides and moons and strange quick jets of fear and hunger. Seaweed gathers at the cave's round lip, sifting the tide as a whale's mouth sifts the tide, clutching with a thousand shiny tentacles, winnowing with a mass of yellow leaves, And yet the most translucent shells are found inside, washed up high and delicately placed upon the gravel bench, the bluest, smoothest stones are there, and the whitest bones.
DreamyD. L. Emblen

The Lost Fleet of Carmel Point

Into the red-brown sunset sea a host of eucalyptus leaves set sail, all curled like sultans' shoes and bearing thick gold loads of pollen dust. Beneath their brittle stems a horde of minnows swam, like schools of porpoise past a crowd of green sampans. Beyond the point, beyond the old pavilion, ripples raced in grinning circles from the other shore, shaking the fleet, dumping untallied cargoes into unmarked deeps, scattering the empty hulls into a dozen criss-cross courses.
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Relic

A broken concrete piling leaning like a whitened spar in the surf, pitted and worn, throttled in snarls of kelp, tilted further and further with each suck of undertow. From the tide mark, from flat on the sand as a resting gull would see it, the piling points like a blunt, monumental finger to that place in the western sky where the first red star appears. From the window of the aging red-board house on the walk it is as thick as a pencil stub. From the churning wash of sand and water at its base, judging by the cautious touch of small creatures, the piling looms as a strange old continent on a strange axis.
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Hour for Decision

In his own half-hour on the pier each man looks upon the sea's green back with his own eyes, seeing knotted seaweed snarls or, leaning harder on the rail, streaming strands of mermaid hair; foam spittle, or trains of old white lace flowing back from the heads of breakers; glints of light, like glass splinters whirling in a drain, or wriggling sea-sperm writhing toward the loose and fecund sand of many beaches. Each man quiets his own loneliness, and shades his own eyes, smiling or snarling, while tons of hissing spray feed mussels on the pilings, colonies of tiny fish race wildly through the waves
SadD. L. Emblen

Death on the Pier

Flounders and sting-rays, spotted bass and crabs and lobsters, all hauled struggling to the worn plank floor of the pier, all stared at on the way up, all dripping their last touch of sea-water, as another creature might lose his life blood. Glistening and pliant of a strange, wet, dark-rubber flesh, bristling about the mouth with vestiges of tusks and spears, helpless and voice-less at the feet of the fishermen. A cold steel knife drawn across their jaws, or a sudden, crushing blow, swung by their tails and thumped against the railing, or strong man-fingers tearing away the hook. Then laid away with other fish bodies in a gunny sack, or left to flop reproachfully upon the splintery boards, to gasp,
AnxiousD. L. Emblen

Lovers' Leap

The crumbling lip of cliff — sandy loam, white-flecked with bits of shells held together loosely by a threadbare mat of wild grasses— tips seaward brokenly, sagging on a limestone hinge. Nettles grow like lost and ragged flowers on a sifting ledge that trickles crumbs of earth deep into a concave vault of sea -mist. Here is a resting place for gulls who stand on wide-webbed feet and listen solemnly to wind and trickling sand and hissing spray. Here is a place for lovers' last long argument, a narrow place for pacing, a half-round stone for resting on, a dark and grinning crevice, widening to draw the hot dry eyes, and a yielding sod
DreamyD. L. Emblen

Beachcomber

I keep finding blue-green bottle buoys, bits of cork and slats bearing oriental characters — remnants of refuse dumped into the Kuro Siwo. And some days there are many chunks of redwood limbs, the shaggy bark worn away, the fibrous wood so steeped in sea water that it can hardly float Whole logs come ashore and broken spars, and once a tumbleweed, fallen from the cliffs at Pt. Concepcion. I never pick up shells anymore, or old shoes or splintered tuna poles or sections of hawsers, mop handles, denim shirts or dead seals. I keep looking for a thick-bottomed, hand-blown flask, one that has bobbed about for eighty-five hundred miles or so, with a note in it from a distressed maiden,

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