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