Like A Secondhand Brown Sofa Poem by C Richard Miles

And, not incongruously, there it sits
Among the other junkshop offerings,
The second-hand old Chesterfield settee,
Plush, re-upholstered brown leatherette;
I wonder as I pass by on the bus:
What has it seen in its short lifetime?

Though it’s now looking for a second-life
Just like its former owners on the Internet
Whose avatars roam distractedly in cyberspace,
It can but dream about its past
When it gave pleasure to them that winter evening
When they conceived their firstborn.

It has encountered joy and pain
Like when his team scored the winning goal
In the second-division play-off finals
Or when she, unbelievingly, took that phonecall
From her mother, revealing the terminal diagnosis.

It has been jumped on by the kids,
A readymade trampoline, when they
Were banned from bouncing on their beds
And, when they were sick with chickenpox
Kept off from school, it was a temporary cot
A witness to the everyday and extraordinary

But now it mopes, rejected, exchanged like her
For a shiny new model, surgically upholstered,
And so she slumps, red-eyed on its poor relation
In a dingy B & B, with two griping ill-kempt sprogs,
Awaiting promised maintenance payments
That never seem to arrive on time as promised.

She still reminisces about the times she owned
The brown settee and all the baggage that came with it
Were things better then, or now, she wonders?
But perhaps like it she may still dream
Of all the possibilities that lie ahead
When she belongs to her next 'owner'.