If you like Haiku, here is my 5-7-5 syllable spring collection. If you don't, flee now in terror and don't look back. Spring Startup Yes I am obsessed at how the trees cast off sleep, snow bunched like sheets. Spring Cleaning Down the warming streets trees shed the last of their leaves, flying winter coats. Spring Banter On carpets of hope I bid good morning to the awakening trees. Spring Willows Gravity buds first send out tentative green shoots bursting into stars.
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I put on my finest green, painted two shamrocks on my cheeks and went out in public. As usual, everyone stared, but at the supermarket I was a Leprechaun trickster, moving into their space as if to say boo, thrusting my face into theirs, backing them up, then laughing and leaving them to their bewilderment. Back out on the streets, to the occasional Chinese who like to hawk loudly and spit on the ground whenever a foreigner passes, I stopped, looked them square in the eyes, hawked and spit back. This spooked them but other onlookers liked it and actually smiled at me, enjoying this small drama, a St. Patrick’s victory of sorts. And on this day I will take every victory I can get. You see, ever since I was young, I have always felt my Irishness. An ache for a land I have inhabited in my mind even before I was conscious enough to know that ideas can reside in the deepest part of the unconscious and will themselves into being, because, even before I could understand it, I was Irish Proud and distrustful of overlords I’d never even been under the yoke of yet, and Irish creative like the great James Joyce, riffing off on imaginary soliloquies, bouncing this word off that word, and that word off this word, in my head you see, making up all sorts of imaginary universes, that by the way, all resisted the British. But it was more than that, it was a kind of sword to the sky defiance, mixed with a moss covered peacefulness, the peace of valleys not yet invaded, and a deep down, born-in melancholy that could make all the leprechauns cry, because I inherited the idea of a sad, lonely, unjust world, yet still, I was a wild Irish lad in the best sense, curious, innately tender, wily, stubborn, willing to take on all comers and then cry by myself because I had beaten them, confused by the terror of my inborn ferocity, snapping and snarling and leaping out at the first sign of oppression, doing battle with Don Quixote windmills I would later become well acquainted with, a ferocity I still saw in the faces of booze-beaten men who stalked about looking for something worth the fighting of the good fight, but settled instead for turning on those who most dearly loved them, creating the age-old Irish sadness that sings its sad dirge to this day from Limerick to Londonderry, from Boston to Nova Scotia. Yet, the world owes so much to the Irish. Its words and phrases have entered the vocabulary. Its music was absorbed and co-opted, birthing new musical movements. True Irish charm launched legions of imitators, and sadly, most of them are politicians, the Kennedy’s included, and so on and so on. Scratch against the skin of diverse nationalities and you will discover some Irish moss in all of them. March is my two-year anniversary in China and I as I crossed the busy road on which I first entered the city, it all came spiraling back to me like a lost vision, and before it escapes again, I would like to share with you all. It was a night of fireworks. In alleys and on sidewalks additional fires were lit so that you could jump over them to insure good luck. I watched a grandfather and his young granddaughter carefully set a fire, and then she gleefully jumped over it and then stood on the opposite side, urging him on, and he jumped, too, while I stood wondering what good luck was for her and what it meant to him. Luck, the night told me, is always in the eye of the beholder. |
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