We are the terraced women
piled row on row on the sagging, slipping hillsides of our
                                                                                               lives.
We tug reluctant children up slanting streets
the push chair wheels wedging in the ruts
breathless and bad tempered we shift the Tesco carrier bags
                                                                          from hand to hand
and stop to watch the town

The hill tops creep away like children playing games

our other children shriek against the school yard rails
‘there’s Mandy’s mum, John’s mum, Dave’s mum,
Kate’s mum, Ceri’s mother, Tracey’s mummy’
we wave with hands scarred by groceries and too much
                                                                                   washing up
catching echoes as we pass of old wild games

after lunch, more bread and butter, tea
we dress in blue and white and pink and white checked
                                                                                          overalls
and do the house and scrub the porch and sweep the street
and clean all the little terraces
up and down and up and down and up and down the hill

later, before the end-of-school bell rings
all the babies are asleep
Mandy’s mum joins Ceri’s mum across the street
running to avoid the rain
and Dave’s mum and John’s mum – the others too – stop
                                                                                                for tea
and briefly we are wild women
girls with secrets, travellers, engineers, courtesans, and stars
                                                                                 of fiction, films
plotting our escape like jail birds
terraced, tescoed prisoners rising from the household dust
like heroines.

Pennyanne Windsor, from *Poetry 1900-2000 One hundred poets from Wales