bottles
Farewell to the bottles!
I have celebrated their contents,
then filled them with messages
releasing them slowly
on wild current promises,
imagined their travels,
feared for those shattered,
dreaded those found,
...more.
At their conception,
I've followed orderly shelf-rows
guessing their contents,
sneering I could see through them.
They weren't deep,
their only claim to profoundness -
their origin: Like earth, beginning in fire,
an expanding sphere, reflecting its maker,
horribly glorious in its flow,
endlessly patient in being formed.
A bottle flows to my feet:
Filled with enough hope
or imagination it is, precariously,
up to its neck in water.
Once I was filled with spirit,
but drunk with my own power,
I consumed myself.
My emptiness now
has made me more transparent, I think.
© Jonathan Bohrn (2000)
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