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/
