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

CheerfulD. L. Emblen

Dragon Cave

There is a steep place down below the end of Jenner Street where centuries of waves have cut a sandstone cave. Each night when lovers walk on the cliff-top, when old people rest there, when stray dogs pause and point their noses to the sunset sky, the sea rolls in across the narrow beach and fills the cave with thunder. Children call it Dragon Cave, they say the hollow booming sound and the rapid crashing sound of waves doubling back upon themselves inside are the alternate laughing and cursing of an unseen creature. They say that one long evening, with all the lovers and old people and stray dogs standing there, a shower of starfish and broken abalone shells will fly from the cavern;
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.
CheerfulD. L. Emblen

Marinorama

Fishboats troll from Sunset Cliffs to reefs beyond La Jolla Bay, leaning with the northwest wind, lurching in the shallow troughs, slewing on the southward run, with heavy seas abeam. People on the cliffs squint and shade their eyes to watch the twelve-foot jig boats take the swells. They exclaim and stare and lean forward in the wind of their own hillsides, loving the clean white bow-stroke deep across the humping backs of the waves, waving their heads in time with brown stick masts waving back and forth, wishing they themselves might be fishermen and feel the touch of sea. The fishermen wipe salt spray from their eyes, and scream profanely to the wind,
CheerfulD. L. Emblen

Old Man Peterbaugh

In all the coves, from Bird Rock to the old Scripps pier, there is no bather or surf rider or diver for abalone who laughs as much or who greets the sea with half the joy of old man Peterbaugh. He teaches boys and girls to swim, flailing long thin arms about like pelican wings; he floats spread-eagled on his back; he swims between the waves, using a shallow side-stroke; he doubles up to rest, his head and feet above the surface, and his bony hands paddling rapidly, turning him around and around, as on a spindle. And when he's done, he slowly swims ashore, rising from the clear green water of the cove— the sea running in torrents from his wrinkled hide, wavelets foaming at his knees,
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,
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
CheerfulD. L. Emblen

Gold Is Where You Find It

It's a poor man on the cliff who cannot harvest gold and silver dreams by nightfall. The joyous, many-cornered sounds of families walking home from long warm days along the beach, carrying inner-tubes and limp towels and remnants of Sunday papers, shiny with sunburn, smiling with the coolness of evening, speak of laughter loosely gathered from the lips of many idle waves, shells and bulbs of kelp, wave-worn sticks and thick green gems of bottles smoothed by countless tidal trips across the beach slope.
CheerfulD. L. Emblen

The Girl with Fountains in Her Shoes

I was walking down Emerald Street on a Sunday morning, an early autumn day that fairly rang with the singing of meadowlarks in the weed fields. She was standing in the center of a patch of fresh-plowed ground, soaking it with a hose, and trodding up and down in a pair of torn tennis shoes to mash the clods. She was smiling like a child and staring down at the rich brown mud and humming to herself. As I watched, she turned the hose full force upon her feet and sang out in rare delight; for streams gushed merrily from holes in the ends of her shoes. "I've got spouts in my shoes!" she laughed.
CheerfulD. L. Emblen

The Bathers

Landsmen crowd the shore like children at a carnival, exclaiming, pointing seaward, shading their eyes with hands and books. They bring their various lives along, as dangling and cumbersome as folding deck chairs in their arms, as intimately varied as their costumes and as basically the same. Old ladies peer nearsightedly and poke the softer sand with canes, Brown and agile as seals, the younger folk run together quickly; smaller children disappear and reappear, crying with sandy mouths. Fathers shyly step across to the moving edge of surf, and stand there, staring; they look naked and cold in their white skins.
CheerfulD. L. Emblen

Trespassers

There is a lawn on Feldspar Street where at least a dozen seagulls come to rest each day. An ordinary lawn, no greener and no larger than those in front of other homes on Feldspar Street. But here, in this one place, shortly after 2 p.m. the sleek white birds convene, to stand and stare at passersby, to preen the smoother feathers at their breast, to sleep, to cry complainingly at grinning dogs who come from several streets at 2:15.

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