IT’S RECALLING ALL THE RACES RUN

That makes me frown and often fret.

It’s recalling that my memory’s gone

Left behind with

Races I never ran but still regret.

It’s knowing I once had 

Muscles, wavy hair and unspent power

To fuel my stride.

Now recalled with diminished self-awareness

And forgotten fields of pride.

IT’S LIVING IN A WORLD I NEVER CHOSE

That makes me question

Who I see behind my eyes.

It’s living in a body that 

fails so often

There’s never a sense of real surprise.

It’s feeling shackled and forgotten

In a prison of my Maker’s 

Cruelest device.

A prison whose crumbling walls

Shout whispers of forgotten fields

And my inevitable demise.

IT’S THOSE FORGOTTEN FIELDS

Where lovers no longer lay 

Where youth and plans and dreams

No longer visit or stay to play. 

It’s the power and the fires of my youth

Thoughtlessly squandered and 

Stupidly spent,

The races I now count as lost

Whose victories and echoing cheers 

So quickly came and more quickly went.

These memories undo my peace 

They shake my fragments of grace.

They leave me to ask with grim irony 

Which of all the races yet to run

Will bring me my final race?

Full disclosure, I’ve been a fan of Tina Jackson since first reading her wonderful novel, The Beloved Children. That novel, like this one, brings history to life with characters so real, complex and interesting you find yourself compelled to keep reading to learn their full story. 

Spirit Burns takes a rich and transformative moment in British history told from the point of view of the Suffragettes, an often neglected driving force for change that fueled cultural and class upheaval in early 20th century Britain. The lives of the woman portrayed are offered in relation to the shocking need for women of that period to be released from the bonds, legal and cultural, that kept them subservient and far poorer than their male counterparts in British society. 

Spirit Burns focuses on the lives of three women who represent Britain’s stagnant class structure of the period in question. These women—a mill worker, a stage performer and a young lady of the upper class—all suffer from British society’s endemic lack of opportunity for those of the “fairer sex” to express themselves, manage their affairs and grow as active partners and competitors to the males who dominate and control their lives. Their at-times militant struggle for the vote serves as an apt metaphor for all the power they were consistently denied on a day to day basis. Nothing holds them down more than the lock-tight grip of poverty and reduced opportunity that was the lot of woman up until the 1920’s.

Miss Jackson is as deft with words as she is in building characters and events you can believe in. And most especially skilled, the reader will discover, in allowing language and common parlance to clearly portray distinctions in class and lifestyles.

Spirit Burns is literature at its finest! I recommend it unhesitatingly.