Magic Bottles

The bottles line the shelf,
empty, tried, a long history
of bottled magic, failed

and cast aside
for the next elixir, the next
quick fix that somehow

never did

and no wonder –
each of them a concoction
that never knew your soul,

that treated the symptoms,
but left the disease untouched,
yearning for God,

but reaching for the bottle.

===================

About the Poem. 

The picture was taken at the Blacksmith Antique Shop in Cambridge. He has more bottles there than any place I think I have ever been and I took a whole series of shots there, that sooner or later I will post here.

But as I was looking through the walls of bottles, I found myself thinking of all the people I know who are medicating themselves through issues of the mind and heart, trying to make the pain go away, treating the pain, and avoiding the actual causes of the pain.

There are cures for almost all hurts and brokenness. That is something I have learned in my own life. But almost all of them require more pain to get to a place of less pain. That’s a hard sell to a person hurting or afraid. So we turn to our magic potions, whatever they might be. Or we do nothing.

Better the devil we know.

I’ve become a believer that most cures to our inner pains need a spiritual element. In my case, as a Christian, that means I need to involve God. But even if you are not Christian, I have come to see that involving that spirit of things greater than we are, is a part of the way to a lasting better place. God (in whatever form you believe in him) knows and loves us to our core, no matter what.

And that kind of love is a good starting point, and a good foundation for the long term path out of our pain. But it is one we resist. Kicking and screaming and insisting we can do it ourselves, like some two year old with a temper tantrum.

Tom