Adelaide B. Shaw
The Collection
He is a man in his sixties is my guess. Hard to tell because of his beard, which hides any wrinkles he would have. His posture is straight and his walk sprightly. He wears faded baggy jeans and a loose plaid flannel shirt. The front of his shop is a mish-mash of old and worn-out items: kitchen ware, books, clothes, tools, the usual stuff found in any junk shop.
It’s in the back where the treasures are kept. Bottles. Shelves and shelves of bottles, antique and new bottles arranged in no order regarding age or use or price. A three-inch pale green medicine bottle gets my attention. It would look nice on a window ledge and I pay the ten dollars.
A few weeks later, wanting to pass the time on a drizzly afternoon, I’m back. I buy two small milk bottles, one to use for cream when serving coffee, one for the window ledge. Fifteen dollars seems like a bargain.
I return to the shop and leave with a large amber medicine bottle and a perfume bottle. The price is reasonable I think, although I don’t know if I am purchasing replicas or genuinely old bottles. It wasn’t my intention, but I have begun a collection.
The window ledge fills and the collection spreads to another window. Some years later, a move and drastic down-sizing forces a culling of everything, especially the collection. I give most to The Thrift Barn and keep only six. They sit on a window ledge, get the morning sun, cast rainbows on the floor, are occasionally dusted.
just passing through:
ideas, plans, hobbies, people
some stay, some leave;
timing and circumstance
this life ... beyond my control
About the Author
Adelaide B. Shaw lives in Somers, NY. She has been creating Japanese poetic forms for fifty years. Her books, An Unknown Road and The Distance I’ve Come, are available on Amazon. She posts published work on http://www.adelaide-whitepetals.blogspot.com