Alan Young describes the fascinating clutter of salesroom or junk shop in this piece from his collection Looking For The Line (Rain Poetry Books, £7.99). A graduate of Aberdeen University, the author has had a varied career, including being a freelance photographer.

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Whatever might have been accomplished

However many dreams fulfilled

Tragedies averted

Here we are

All down to this

This ugly place where lives are bought and sold.

~

The somewhat tarnished,

The rarely burnished,

The used and the abused,

The almost new (a china jug, chipped, she aimed it at his head)

Pop star “limited editions”,

The Golden Hinde caught in a jar,

A clinking army of whisky miniatures,

A wedding ring from a dead man’s hand,

A musty old style wind-up without the 78s,

Here and there a cuddly toy,

Ceramics (fakes and doubtfuls),

Beds,

Mattresses,

Boxes of old LPs,

Cider jugs

Beatles magazines,

Scales that once held things in balance,

Seaside postcards (no D. McGill if you please,

collectors found elsewhere),

And so it was and so it is

And so it goes and on and on.

~

Once they were such valued treasures

Once they thought they’d live forever.

~

Now these lonely bits and pieces –

All that’s left.

~

Electrical goods cannot be guaranteed.

~

Paddles must be used.