‘Escape’ by Sharon Phillips

After Self Portrait at a Window, c.1900, by Käthe Kollwitz

And one of these fine spring days
when the light’s angle shows
where overwintered dirt is lurking,

I’ll stand at the window, one hand
on the curtain — I might be tugging
it straight, perhaps, or brushing off

a dead fly — and watch the square
below, its fountain, gravel paths
and nursemaids with shiny prams,

gaunt women and rickety children
queueing outside its iron railings
for the doctor’s pauper clinic,

all of it the same as any other day
and I’ll see myself walking away.

Meet the Poet

Sharon Phillips stopped writing poetry in 1976 and started again forty years later, after retiring from her career in education. Her poems have been published online and in print. Originally from Bristol, Sharon now lives in Otley, West Yorkshire.