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.

© Tess Somervell