By the looks of it, the cola can must have been there a while, years maybe. The top side day after day squinting at the noon sun, its red color bleached now pink by strong rays, laying, praying for a cloud cover shade that might bring a drop of cool rain, warm reminiscence.

What is a cola can without its cola? A liquid for-that-matter, without a container to contain? Lost? Untapped? Useless? Cupped hands, a bottle, a lakebed or ocean floor; is the value in the vessel or the liquid within?

The need is mutual of course, the two define each other, but we don’t see it that way very often, often placing value solely on the contents. If it wasn’t for me you’d still be drinking from your dirty cupped hands you ungrateful son-of-a-bitch. Have some respect!

What a tragedy then for such a necessary thing as a can, cursed by its value being defined by its contents,  primped and dressed to catch the consumer’s eye, sold and emptied of its very worth, to be discarded in a landscape such as this–a desert, bone-dry and parched?Why not a river dammit, why not the ocean! I, the writer yet without a pen! I, the soldier, without a war! It seems necessity does not always impart a real and lasting value. 

Some justice then, a twist of fate I imagine for a used and empty can, pitched from a bridge or dumped from a loaded barge, afloat in a vast ocean to finally sink, surrounded by liquid significance. The contents become the vessel. Roman amphorae, pulled from the depths of the great sea, the Mare Nostrum, emptied, dried, then placed behind museum glass and on display, entombed, never again replete with worth. Damn you diver, treasure-hunter, robber of purpose, thief of meaning!

I think to myself, how nice to feel useful; a sturdy, grounding, foundational sense of purpose if only for a moment; if only for this moment. If only it were so easy, to have your purpose so defined.

I pick the can up and stuff it in my bag with the others hoping that the next place they go is better than this. To a smelter, cast into an ingot, then a mold–perhaps an engine block or some aluminum siding with a glorious lifetime warranty. I wonder then, how many times I’ve recast myself in the effort to retain an almighty purpose? And you?