Blue Bottles

Blue bottles in the light,
lined up like soldiers in the shop.
Prepared, you wonder, for what?
An invasion? A siege?
Perhaps they are dancers on a stage,
or singing an aria in an opera.
Perhaps.

Surely, you say to yourself,
there is something more to them
than vessels of the past, emptied
and left, like corpses on a bier.
Surely?

About this poem

A poem about bottles in an antique shop. A poem about people left and abandoned, a shell of what they once were or could have become. Inspired by many of the people I am privileged to care for in my various jobs, and colored blue by my own experiences.

The picture was taken in an antique shop in Cambridge, NY.

Tom