Rapeseed

Matt Gillick

Our tour bus dug through a hedged edge

of Wicklow highway, sunny petals

brushed against the window.

Out from distant thatch arose a lady;

a bog lady in the wrong story.

She ran to us, naked,

blonde hair sprinkled the hills.

Pale skin, pale running skin,

like she was fleeing St. Kevin’s

cave—mortified at his decline—

to drown herself in the lake

while he broods with God in the damp dark.

Knees red and patched, her muddy

hands waved at us as we drove by—

slow down, please.

She fell into a drainage ditch,

disappeared into waist-high bilge,

apparated back to her still bog—or

dissolved, leaving nothing but salt

used to make pretty little flowers

so she, too, could be a pretty thing

to pass by on the way to Glendalough.