Parked close, but in the opposite direction, he stepped
back to let me open my door first: a smile, a gesture
like a bow, which had me fumbling in my bag
under that grey-eyed gaze, alarmed by his
unlined face, the soft flesh of the throat.
And then, as I slid the cold key
home, a glimpse of those Michelangelo feet, flexed
in their leather straps, one chino hem rucked
back to reveal an ankle. The years
fell from me like a gown, but as I buckled
up and started the engine, I remembered
the secateurs I’d bought to dead-head the roses,
my bumper pack of glucosamine, and I winked
at the blushing face in my rear-view mirror.
© Jill Sharp
Picture No 12924919, © Pictures Now / Mary Evans
Jill Sharp has worked as a tutor with the Open University and has also taught excluded teenagers. Her poetry has been published in many magazines including Acumen, Envoi, The Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter’s House, Mslexia, Prole, Poetry Salzburg Review, Stand, and Under the Radar. Her work has also appeared in various anthologies, most recently Pale Fire (Frogmore Press) and Contemporary Gothic Verse (Emma Press), as well as online at And Other Poems, Ink, Sweat and Tears and London Grip. Her pamphlet Ye gods was published by Indigo Dreams (2015), and she was one of six poets in Vindication, an anthology from Arachne Press (2018). Her poem ‘Cemetery crow’ was placed joint-second in the 2020 Keats-Shelley Prize. Jill was a founder member of Swindon’s BlueGate Poets, and she has run regular writing workshops at the Richard Jefferies Museum at Coate.
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