One man's trash

a row of treasure / perched high in a window, scattering light / would surely suffice.

One man's trash

Bottles glistened among wet clothes
abandoned by the Army's dumpster;
no salvation for rain-soaked cotton
or cold polyester, but the glass ...

They wet his hands as he shook them,
placed them, damp, in nylon pockets.

Cleaned and filled with colored water,
they'd catch grey rays of impending winter,
paint a rainbow on falling plaster,
on dull nails and cold pale walls. In the fall

when summer's leavings lay abandoned
when bare trees glistened necklaces
of mist, then ice, even this: a row of treasure
perched high in a window, scattering light

would surely suffice.

© 2008 Kåre Enga [165.333] 2008-11-09

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Note from original blog post "One man's trash" : I was sitting at the Palace half-listening to folks reading fiction I could barely hear (teach them to enunciate, I told John). I had two small bottles in my pockets. I'd found them next to the Salvation Army dumpster on my way to the reading. I knew they would join my row of colored glass and glasses filled with colored water. I have two windows facing south in a hundred year old hotel room that is 11 by 12. So many of my poems are pure fiction woven from one or two strands of truth-as-I-perceive-it. But this particular sketch approaches my reality. Update: I now live in two rooms next door to my old room. My windows are adorned with bottles.