Like Brown Glass Bottles

They threw out bottles of brown glass into the grass,
Which smell now of dust and dirt, earth and grime, cold as December to the touch,
Near frozen as the ground, above which the late geese sound out their plaintive honking, on skies torn open like a sack of grain, its thrift-bare clouds white and barren

Blown and crafted and then left, forgotten, their purpose served
They come to us now with no message inside, having sailed no ocean, and yet
There is aliveness in their curves, hinting towards breath

Largely bereft of design, worn down, their letters torn away by sand and grit, buried in squelching mud, all these decades later—they rise
For you and I to find, surprised in the cold, pure morning  

I have seen the same in antique stores, restored,
And like any true old thing, they bring a curious sort of singing;
It is a strange beauty to know we will not last, and that simple objects will surpass us

And because they hum with stories that can only be guessed at, I play the game:
I wonder whose lives these vessels served, and whose hands held them
Whose need preserved them until their bodies, sapped of strength, sat down to weep or sleep,
Then lay down and rose no more
So that those who came after, seeing only trash, tossed them out

Now we hold such objects close, though I wonder how far the cycle goes:
Will my own children shrug and toss them out?
Artifacts of a past life, forgotten?

Or will they hold them because I once held them and so also felt their cold curve at my fingertips?
Will they bless the hands that held them, and birthed them?
And perhaps place the brown glass on a mantel to remind them that some shaped things, like hope itself, defy all deaths

There is no message in the bottles but they are their own epistles, self-contained and speaking
Witnessing that not all things break
And that some truth rises up against death itself—even in demise promising a duration

We are like bottles in the earth, pressed down, with some hope inside—some truth which—though buried, drowned, or smashed—
Simply will not die
And rising, cold death deny