Anne Berkeley
She is at her easel, dibbling a brush in the turps.
The easel is between us, like a mirror I can’t see through.
Sit still, she says, and begins another
furious dab dab dab of colour.
I am being squeezed from tubes of burnt sienna, lead white
and she is cross with me for not coming clear.
I’m not allowed to see till she’s ready.
I will know when that is: when she lights her cigarette.
Anne Berkeley lives in Cambridgeshire. Her first collection The Men from Praga (Salt) was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney prize in the distant past. Recent poems in Dreich, Scintilla and Under the Radar.
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