'Tis getting t' be time for the "wearing of the green"

This morning I stopped by Irish on Grand in St. Paul. As this is being written I've a loaf of Irish bread in the oven. It's that time of year again -- St. Patrick's Day ☘ is but three weeks away. Between now and then we get to vote in the presidential primary. Late next month is our district convention. Yes, I  did attend and participate in last night's precinct caucus. I even made a pitch for endorsement support for Gaylene Spolarich, my preferred MN CD8 candidate for Congress.

Growing up in Boston I always associate Irish and politics. It was only recently that I read about the linkage between potato monoculture and the potato famine. Meanwhile, the Better Half has become enthralled with a book, The Summer Isles, that came as a Christmas present. She now wants to read more like it. Her birthday is about midway between now and St Patrick's Day, so maybe a faery or a Leprechaun can help her out. I, on the there hand, will dig out my volumes of Seamus Heaney's poems and add in Yeats' The Celtic Twilight to my reading stack. With "the luck of the Irish," by this time next month it might even be warm enough to curl up outside for a bit and read a poem or two while sitting  on the deck, listening for returning blackbirds and geese.

moss growing on fallen tree trunks is an early season green

Photo by J. Harrington

As the snow melts, the North Country starts to wear green. This is the time of year when life returns with vigor. All the Irish I've know were full of life and vigor, so St. Patrick's Day seems timely, although I remember marching in more than one parade in Boston with sleet or snowflakes blowing in my face and a stiff breeze rippling the flags. But soon the ground will have thawed enough to begin thinking about this year's plantings, whether potatoes or ornamentals. First, though, some of us have to do some

Digging

By Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb   

The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound   

When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:   

My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds   

Bends low, comes up twenty years away   

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills   

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft   

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.   

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man on Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.

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