With four at home under eight
and a fifth hibernating
from the Belfast cold
she never heard the news.
Absorbed with meals and spills and cleans
and tears and washing
and dressing and feeding fires
and checking foreheads, tucking back in
and hugging tight,
she eased her way
around that house
in Balmoral Avenue
until Christmas passed and
the hope that I’d wait
till New Year rose and fell
then in she want to the Royal.
But I wouldn’t wait,
I wouldn’t show
my pinched face in her arms
on the New Year’s front pages.
Out I came on its eve
and along with the cooing and doting
of other women, came the news,
that four weeks before, JFK had been shot.
Aideen Henry has published two collections Hand Moving at the Speed of Falling Snow (Salmon, 2010 ) and Slow Bruise (Salmon, 2015). She was shortlisted for the Hennesy Award for Emerging Poetry.
