Poetry By Aideen Henry

Rudiger Stehn CC



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We Loved Big, then Parted

Fool that I am, I declared myself. 
He galloped over that horizon
bags full, smiling
his emotions tucked safe inside him.

I grappled to close over the rupture
draw myself back to myself.
 Feeling short-changed
 I wrote for his withheld answers.

His response, a scientific treatise 
without bibliography
dispassionate, technically correct 
third person 
                            heartless.

I’m a risker, a breaker 
a leaper, a chance taker.
I like a bit of madness, me
arse to the wind
                             tóin le gaoth.

He missed all of that.
He finished with the lie
that truth is hard to know.
He is hard to know.
                             Truth’s easy.

I know the look of it
the smell of it, the taste of it
the feel of it against my cheek
between my teeth.

Truth’s unmissable.
Even when you look away from it 
it’ll trip you up repeatedly.
It’s persistent that way
                             truth is.



Tóin le gaoth; phonetically ‘Thowin lay guyee’; ‘backside to the wind’, both a place name and attitude, in Gaelic.

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Aideen Henry, an Irish writer, has been published in the Irish Times, the Stinging Fly and broadcast on RTE Radio 1. 
She has three collections of poetry published, Hands Moving at the Speed of Falling Snow, Slow Bruise and A Bloodless Field. And one collection of short stories, Hugging Thistles.