From Mary Spencer to George Stubbs. 

Early morning there you are on the stairs 
with the dust circulating: the old hack 
bearing the hunk of his art on his back 
(all ninety-five stone of it). Tell me there’s 
no need today to sweep the last one’s hairs 
from your studio floor; he’ll watch my back, 
this one, hanging like a bat from the rack 
overhead. While you draw, I sweep, he stares. 
Mother asks why I stay I say maybe 
your work ethic, tearing limb from limb to 
turn them into knowledge. Or it may be 
how you know all my bones when you lay me 
on the bed. Or how when you bleed him to 
death, you cradle his head like a baby.

(c) Tess Somervell

The Postman

Satchel on hip
the postman goes
from doorstep to doorstep
and stooping sows

each letterbox
with seed. His right
hand all the morning makes,
the same half circle. White

seed he scatters,
a fistful of
featureless letters
pregnant with ruin or love.

Moscow for Teens

Our borrowed kitten, black and white like ice,
Chases full bottles of aspirin and makes no sound.

Sum mer is hard to see through: slags of dust
Deform the coppery air. Orioles in the elms?

St. Michael roams the curbs and perezhods,
Handing out his weapons of bruised fruit;

Baize

I should have tried harder
to love Steve Davis.
If not for his neat bow tie
then for his rare motor skills.

Good hand-eye co-ordination
smooths the path of a relationship.
At least one of you must have it,
like hope, and the ability

to love and keep one's word.
There was much I failed to understand
that Steve tried to explain:
that life's a process of elimination,

Far Away

From the edge of her cornfield you could
Take the path of the weeds to the house

Some said she was deaf, so I waited
Until I saw that she noticed my shadow.

We sat outside the whole day. I remember
Her deep blue apron smelled of wild apples,

Slowly, the short noon shadows around the garden