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

ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Early April, Mission Beach

Alone on the beach the curlews follow in each receding wave, rattling down the smooth incline of glistening sand, spooning the soft slope with long, tube-like bills, grey and brown and white, as the sand is grey and brown and white. The gulls, sleepy and fat, yet watching the curlews fish with a certain belligerance, huddle together, colony-wise, higher up where the dry sand is white as salt. Their heads turn, and the wind tufts their feathers, and they hug the sun-warmed, wind-smoothed sand. Seaweed tumbles in with the surf, the whole brown writhing mass of it turning over with each oncoming and retreating wave. And settling again,
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,
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Mitchell's Landing

This is one of many places in the marsh where man has been and gone, leaving a leaning post, a splintered bamboo pole, a broken bucket, a sagging plank that crossed the slough. Here is where he sat and watched the minnows dart from one reed jungle to the next, where lumbering blue herons flapped a yard above his head, where he paused within the limp-rag flopping sound of wavelets lapping on the shore to listen to the tick-tick-tick of his own consciousness.
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Morning at the Bait Barge

The sea comes in by devious paths, as an old river wandering through a marsh and delta country; reaches in with rounded tongues and narrow, level-seeking arms, fondling the shaggy pilings, gently lifting floats and the fleet of rowboats, slowly feeling the feet of hills, exploring the soft silt bay bottom foot by foot as each new tide covers the tracks of seabirds. The morning air flows down, pouring in a softly scented breath from the mouth of Mission Valley, widening to a thinner tide upon a thick green marsh-grass meadow, carrying the sounds of bird calls and dog voices and muffled city noise, like a distant humming. Here the sea and valley breath converge within an inlet full of razor clams,
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Bill's Pier

Bill's pier stands on wormy cedar pilings, bluntly out from the slight smooth curve of beach, a shifting web of planks,a lonely place as a raft would be lonely floating in the space between the crescent horns of a moon. Looking back at night, the cubic patterns of lighted streets spread out across the soft black mounds of the continent. It is a place where you stand open-coated and open-faced, savoring and nodding to the mystic monologue of sea. A few dim lights spray saffron splashes on old railings . . . the surf seethes violently about each worn piling. And at night like this, from the end of Bill's pier you feel the weight and towering size of that coming cloud bank, looming high and black,
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

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.
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Turning of a Season

The first rain comes in September, sifting down in miniature drops, a mist-like rain that is not quite seen. It is known by colors deepening along the street— dust into brown soil, weeds into plants with pea-green leaves, faded boards into orange squares and cubes and rectangles,, darkening patches on the roofs. By noon the thread-bare summer haze that has hung like a dusty cobweb across the sun for many weeks is gone, torn and shredded away by a ton of water falling in a million weight-less particles, dissolved in a slow spray that washes seeds and seed-husks, and pieces of sand, slivers, burrs, shattered pods and rotted leaves
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Change of Tide at Mission Beach Bridge

The last small wave is hurried through, drawn splashing and struggling in between the walls of the channel, snatched from the whole blue sea and tossed without ceremony upon the shallow, widening bay. And then the one in charge of tides, of storms, of lonely sand spits and lost seagulls blows a soothing breath or smiles commandingly or takes the palms of his hands and presses the water out flat and holds it there, with both arms around, as one might hold a platter of cream until there is no fear of spilling any of it. The green bay water is so still that a feather from a mud hen's wing makes circles, as a stone makes circles in a mountain lake.

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