Where an omnibus idles in lucent July, Japanese couples
come from the nuns’ tearoom past postcard racks & snap
redundantly, themselves before a blue boat beached in the rushes.

There are two sights of Kylemore Abbey — the Gothick chapel
& this lakeside pastoral, but no Polaroid can develop
the long bronzy thresh of the pike sawing the line
at an oaken oarlock &
plunging deep from the light.
The instinctual hunter betrays the serene Latin
of these Irish Dames of Ypres, Benedictines all —
a crucifix in each varnished room of the robber baron’s castle.

But the sign foresight makes is not the chalk or charcoal
fish of the catacombs, but the real ravener — slick, toothy,
y-boned, haunting the glacial chill of Pollacappul —
implacable, ancient, myopic, deaf to human prayer.

Today’s poem is from Ago (Salmon), Thomas Dillon Redshaw’s recent new collection