Bicycling for Ladies by John Burnside

Cycle tracks will abound in Utopia.
H. G. Wells

Factory Girls

after talking to Sylvia and other speakers I thought

that here is something I can dedicate myself to help

in some way to put things right

Nellie Cressall

Imperial Triumph; Golden Sunbeam;

Ladies' Light Weight No. 17, (The Suffragette);

between the morning and the evening wash

they dream of riding out, like Pankhurst girls,

in Rational Dress, on shiny new machines,

to Waltham Abbey, Thornwood, Magdalen Lever;

(I stand and rejoice every time I see

a woman ride by on a wheel)

though no kind word can ever wash away

the lavender and lilac of their days,

and not for them the solitude of some

far crossroads, with its litany of names

from ancient times,

they want to ride for hours, on country lanes

through Saxon woods and miles of ripening grain

and end up at some point of no return,

like changelings, in some faded picture book

from childhood, going headlong through the dark

to some new realm , where no mere man is king.

The Bow Cyclists

not merely for votes but towards an egalitarian

society

Sylvia Pankhurst

I dreamed you came again

through the smog of time,

match-girls and broom-makers,

cycling from street to street

with The Women's Dreadnought;

the houses lit for miles,

like beacons

and a true friend

stepping from every door

to greet you, brushing flakes

of lanolin or matchwood from her sleeves,

the dawn light on her face

and some fresh scent

of elsewhere on the wind, as she resumes

the life she set aside, a grief ago.

The marches are done with,

the hunger strikes, danger of death

forgotten, as the sun cuts through the fog



and all the world cycles away, like risen souls

made new and tender for the life to come



in some lost Resurrection Of The Body.


http://www.winningwordspoetry.com/celebrating-london-2012/