Bottle Cap History

A box of bottle caps sits on the antique dealer’s table.
Your childhood flashes by,
a collection of round caps and colors,
each one a story of visits and travels,
the only place soda was allowed for the boy you were.

You feel ten again, that age between innocence
and a bursting forth, finding yourself
through a series of missteps and adolescent
hormone injected choices,
between innocence and fear.

You pick up the colored caps in your hands
and let them fall through your fingers
into the old wooden box where they reside,
and turn away, content
to let then be then.

About this poem

It took me till my fifties to learn how to let then be then. What a change in my life that made.

I really did have a bottle cap collection once. It was huge. I have no idea what happened to it.

Tom