Sunday, July 5, 2015

Santa Catalina - A Magpie Tale


Bathers, 1950 by George Tooker
Offered by Tess of Magpie Tales as the subject of Mag 277

Santa Catalina

Take the morning boat
to Avalon and meet her
on Beacon Street if
you want what she has.

You will go diving for pearls
in a while along
the hot sandy shoals
all laid out on this summer's
tidal bore bearing
down on our pebbled
beach where the sun dogs pile up.

It's hard to focus
on what's what when you
nurse the wounds made by the gals,
the angry young gals
left on the rocky
shoals of the lee side of things.
There's no fresh water,
no fresh water here.

‎July ‎5, ‎2015 2:28 PM

10 comments:

  1. No fresh water could be our ultimate curse. An appealing piece of writing.

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  2. It's hard to focus
    on what's what when you
    nurse the wounds made by the gals

    ... and vice versa! Lovely work.

    ReplyDelete
  3. My mother grew up on Catalina Island the youngest of a trio of children born to one father, a Dutch immigrant and then as oldest sister to another trio born to another father, an Australian immigrant. It was he and her mother who were employed by the Wrigley enterprises on Catalina. She left Catalina for high school, I assume the last couple years, living in a house helper situation on the mainland and getting help for college.

    She went to college after she turned down he chances for a starlet's start in Hollywood where she worked in the secretarial pool at Paramount Studios. She told me she and Anne Baxter worked in the same pool and Anne went on to a movie career while she turned down both the casting couch and the nose job and went to college in Berkeley during the war.

    How she did this, she was subsidized by two sisters with money, whom she had boarded with during high school, presumably who had befriended her when they vacationed on Catalina and took her in.

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  4. Favorite line : "where the sun dogs pile up." :-)

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  5. I enjoyed this ~~ and your interesting comment!

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  6. The California story, in our time...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's the key to the "no fresh water" line for sure.

      Delete
  7. I enjoyed the flow with this piece.

    ReplyDelete

The chicken crossed the road. That's poultry in motion.


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