April 28, 2019 - The Wearing o' the Green

Is this what they call the “Wearing o’ the Green”?  Perhaps in a way, but I thought it fitting today as everything is beginning to swell.  You can hear it more than see it at this point, actually.  Early in the morning, if you wake up and keep your eyes closed, you can hear a whirring sound.  It is the sound you might hear if a thick weighted rope were being swung quickly in a circle above your head.  As the rope comes closer to your head, you would hear the whirring, whipping sound.  As it flew by and continued on, the sound would dissipate to a whisper.

This is the time.  I can hear it.  Everything is swelling and whispering like the spinning rope, back and forth, back and forth . . . threatening to become.  Green tendrils are pushing up here and there, silently spreading on the ground or anywhere they can get a hold.  The grass is back, but that is to be expected.  It is not the same.  It is the growing of the other green I am interested in.

Life grows wherever it is.  Furrows and rows and carefully tended yards are the green in captivity.  They could not grow anywhere else in such a way because it is the only life

they know.  But it is the secret green, the life growing wherever it is, wherever it finds even the slightest opportunity—that is the magic.  That is the “Wearing o’ the Green” in the woods in spring.  Permission is neither sought nor granted.  Life appropriates.

 

“You may take the shamrock from your hat and cast it on the sod,

but ‘twill take root and flourish there

though underfoot ‘tis trod.”   --  Irish street ballad, circa 1798