Mending Nets
Too soon lengthening shadows
ripple across the pebbled strand.
Too soon yellow leaves fall like silence.
Wearing an ill-fitting coat of solitude
(a man should be alone only at sea)
he padlocks the smokehouse door
and contemplates a winter of healing snow.
As the eye seeks comfort in any star
on a moonless night, he will mend his nets
and hope this mitigation of loss
will ease the grief that settles like a mist
on the featureless reach of memory.
Reprinted from Assent
Copyright David Olsen 2009
Reprinted from New World Elegies,
Finishing Line Press, Copyright David Olsen 2011
Reprinted from Unfolding Origami
Cinnamon Press, Copyright David Olsen 2015
Shortlisted and reprinted from The Loneliness Project
Theatre Cloud competition, Copyright David Olsen 2016
Too soon lengthening shadows
ripple across the pebbled strand.
Too soon yellow leaves fall like silence.
Wearing an ill-fitting coat of solitude
(a man should be alone only at sea)
he padlocks the smokehouse door
and contemplates a winter of healing snow.
As the eye seeks comfort in any star
on a moonless night, he will mend his nets
and hope this mitigation of loss
will ease the grief that settles like a mist
on the featureless reach of memory.
Reprinted from Assent
Copyright David Olsen 2009
Reprinted from New World Elegies,
Finishing Line Press, Copyright David Olsen 2011
Reprinted from Unfolding Origami
Cinnamon Press, Copyright David Olsen 2015
Shortlisted and reprinted from The Loneliness Project
Theatre Cloud competition, Copyright David Olsen 2016
