Sandra Osborne - The Empty Beer Bottle

I don’t know how long the old empty brown and broken beer bottle
had sank into the grass and gravel of the old trail in the baking sun,
nor did I know how many days it had glistened in the falling rain,
or if it’s previous owner had ever given it a second thought,
it being tossed, or thrown, or simply dropped, discarded and empty?

I knelt and picked it up, holding it’s fragile shattered brown glass
by the still intact label spelling out Budweiser in faded red letters.
It was old but not so old not to have a screw on cap, and it was broken
around the bottom, the missing jagged pieces being lost in some antiquity,
or taken by another passer by or ground into the dusty brown sand of the trail.

I felt sorry for it. That it wasn’t loved more, that no one cared for its shell.
Was it only trash? Litter upon the beauty of nature? Blight upon the green of life?
No, it was history, a drunken history most likely, but history still.
And I would save it. So I wrapped it in an old piece of newspaper from my backpack,
and after arriving home, I washed it gently and placed it on my windowsill.

The old empty beer bottle sits there now beside other memories gathered here and there,
like the old 10-ounce green colored Coke bottle perhaps guzzled on a hot summers day
by some freckle faced boy in overalls. Or the post card of Ansel Adams’ Yosemite,
or the old “Schaefer’s” 1965 gold and white Distributors ashtray, complete with wreath.
Trinkets, they live within the memory of finding them. They are as precious as jewels.

Sandra Osborne

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-empty-beer-bottle/