Servants

I wouldn’t mind a house
managed by servants—
an English butler
to advise me
whether to take tea in the study
or outside in the garden,
a cook whose kitchen is a temple
and whose table bears testimony
to imagination and love,
a gardener to tend the hedges
of the children’s boxwood labyrinth,
a housekeeper who brings order
to the library’s scattered books,
and most important of all,
a secretary and amanuensis,
an angel who, unseen, leaves
each morning on my desk
a ream of fresh paper
and an onyx fountain pen
beside a little silver bell
I might lift and ring
to summon all twelve muses
if that’s whom I wanted,
if I thought they ever had
something poetic to say.

from Apropos of Nothing by Richard Jones