RATH in Gortatole

Marian and I walked past the rath at Gortatole on Sunday, her fingers tracing the grassy bank while we debated whether it was a fortress or a garden wall. She insisted the stones remembered heat before they remembered violence, that people sat there watching rain move across the fields. I pictured a woman losing a ring into the soil and never stopping her laughter because the earth had joined the game. Marian dropped her coin into the grass and told me the rath kept what we refused to carry home.