An Audience with Lady Ottoline, by Cos Michael

Lady Ottoline Morrell, by Augustus John (England) 1919

An Audience with Lady Ottoline   
 
Haughty in her velvet, swagged with pearls 
abandoned, swamped in aristocracy
Lady Ottoline’s mad eyes glare at the room
she is weird as a witch and she's watching me
I came to the National Portrait Gallery
to see the faces, read their history
I came to judge, but Ottoline
stares back, she sneers, teeth clenched
and challenges my naïve belief
that I could view their two-dimensional oils 
pinned like butterflies in solitary frames
their posterity mine to occupy 
but there are more of them than me and each
is peering brazen through the windows
of my house. This gallery is theirs
I am the passing entertainment 
and Lady Ottoline Morell still audits me 
until I know my place, pay my respects
and leave her to her strange imaginings.
 
Cos Michael
 
As a child, Cos Michael’s ambitions stretched to socks that would stay up and egg and chips in a café. Since then, her career has been many and varied, but always creative. Aged 50, she was diagnosed as autistic, which brought her life into sudden focus. Her themes explore growing up and life now, from an autistic perspective, She's had poems published by The Alchemy Spoon, Wildfire Words, Atrium and the Grindstone Poetry Anthology.
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