Sheila Nickerson
The Consignment Shop
We bring in two lamps no longer
wanted and take away another.
Perhaps this is heaven: a second-hand
shop where we can make exchanges
and come back as something else.
At the door we are checked in,
evaluated, committed to a contract,
and then we wait: perhaps
here by the child’s desk,
or there, by the glass table,
the one with gold candlesticks
and yellow satin flowers in a vase.
There are little rooms and large,
all arranged by color and like kind
where we are silently displayed
to our advantage.
Perhaps if someone still alive
remembers us, a light shines
and we are chosen, taken back
into that other world we knew,
once more a different shape,
once more learning how to be.
Sheila Nickerson (Bellingham, Washington) is a former Poet Laureate of Alaska. Her most recent title, nonfiction, is Harnessed to the Pole: Sledge Dogs in Service to American Explorers of the Arctic, 1853-1909 (University of Alaska Press, 2014)
Return to March 2015 Edition
We bring in two lamps no longer
wanted and take away another.
Perhaps this is heaven: a second-hand
shop where we can make exchanges
and come back as something else.
At the door we are checked in,
evaluated, committed to a contract,
and then we wait: perhaps
here by the child’s desk,
or there, by the glass table,
the one with gold candlesticks
and yellow satin flowers in a vase.
There are little rooms and large,
all arranged by color and like kind
where we are silently displayed
to our advantage.
Perhaps if someone still alive
remembers us, a light shines
and we are chosen, taken back
into that other world we knew,
once more a different shape,
once more learning how to be.
Sheila Nickerson (Bellingham, Washington) is a former Poet Laureate of Alaska. Her most recent title, nonfiction, is Harnessed to the Pole: Sledge Dogs in Service to American Explorers of the Arctic, 1853-1909 (University of Alaska Press, 2014)
Return to March 2015 Edition