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

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.
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
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,
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Resident

An old man's cottage on the sand, down off Bacon Street, has a yard of lawn and a pink geranium hedge. They grow and bloom in a three-inch layer of reddish dirt that he has hauled there and spread out on his hands and knees. He lives alone, watching the years' high-water marks advance across the beach, chasing the seagulls out of his garden, befriending the swimmers. After each summer day, after ten hours of sun-glare from the hot, white sand, he sits in an old rocker on the porch and sips lemonade and inhales the coolness of his green backyard and watches the sun dissolve into amber fire and pearl grey smoke along the horizon.
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Livestock

All manner of creeping, crawling, scuttling things celebrate the morning in their own fashion. Sow-bugs, antlered worms, moths and ants and sand-crickets and pincher-armed termites pause in the first fall of sunlight on their patch of ground, and suck the clods for one last taste of moisture. The dew-cooled surface dirt crumbles dry, scorpions grope with rigid claws and jade green centipedes tumble down the shiny shovel-blade. The brown earth moves with multitudes, unknown hordes of barbarians and sophists, that leave broad, silvered trails, narrow trenches, like wheel-ruts; funnels and delta-fans of masticated soil. This is the way the beach land grows, changing hourly,
ContemplativeD. L. Emblen

Between Times

As the beach towns sleep, lulled by the surf roar — somehow more distinct at night, yet strangely subdued by dawn — long after the mound of ruby and emerald and diamond lights of Ocean Beach darkens like a pile of cooling coals, a million vari-colored clams stir in the shallow bay, and hold themselves open on taut muscles a million other creatures move about or hide or silently die or give birth. Complex mouths—snail mouths and anemone mouths— open and close in the fluid atmosphere of their underwater places. Crabs crawl from shell to shell; minnows dart through tide pools like silver slivers, frightened by the glint of moonlight on the rocks. A lonely heron rises from the flats,
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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