The Charm Of The Nearly New Poem by Lois Read

The little wren seems delighted
to u[-grade, to raise her chicks
in the blue-bird house
not caring a bit that
the bluebirds now find it unsuitable.

'One man's junk another man's treasure'
Where did that saying come from?
Probably from the first one
to open an antique shop,
organize a flea market.

'Nearly new, ''Slightly Used'
marketing terms hinting at a history
a story of belonging to someone
somewhere sometime other, perhaps
a spinster sipping tea

from a chipped china cup
pining for a lost love
slipping into her batiste cheise
giving her long gray hair forty strokes
with her silver-backed hairbrush

possibly the very one I saw at the flea market.
The little wren sits sprightly
on the roof of the bluebird house
ready to move on when the babies fly off
leaving the house as she found it.