Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, again,
and I'm wearing green shoes, green shirt--
overeager as usual. I've never really enjoyed St. Patrick's Day, or any other holiday, for that matter, and I find
it ironic that the more significance we give to a person or
event the more their meaning is deluded. But it's good to have something to look forward to.

Today, in America,
St. Patrick may as well be a naked, red-headed lepperchaun.
People don't care about him as much as me; they don't get out of bed
each day that week wearing green and scoffing at
the timid early-spring sun gazing at the short-sleeved men and
brown-thighed women.
Maybe it matters to them that suntans at the beginning
are only de-tubed relics of an ancient, burning photosynthesis
relinquished to the ground. It matters to me more that
these women think-- even more, know!--
that it is too late in the early spring to cover their legs and
allow the pale, unready skin lie in hibernation.
They want to show the men their defined calves and
undefined dreams. They fain naivety with bright hues, such as Kelly.
And I frown, because I know they have to do this, or
I wouldn't notice them. Waking up and putting green shirts on
the whole week leading up to St. Patrick's day.
Anticipating the Spring, which is already here, they raise their glistening
arms in the air and lean back, smiling, to sing a toast to the short, Irish martyr.
Who wouldn't rub their flesh with dripping tongues for fingers?