Toni Stone
401 Buck Hollow Road
Fairfax, VT 05454 march 16, 2001
st.patrick’s day
i began from BOSTON, the place that has green bagels for
ST. PATRICK’S DAY. i am not irish but many of my friends
and our neighbors were. ..peggy o neill is the name ofmy dearest friend.
we always wore GREEN for march seventeenth…welcome herald ot the end of winter in BOSTON.
dogs wore green neck kerchiefs. old men had green hair.
everyone had everything colored green for the big day…even underwear. people painted old shoes green.
they dried them to wear for the parade.
by noon in south BOSTON, where we lived, if you were not out on the avenue with your drink of choice
and with all your relations wearing the green, there was no hope for you.
it was just too bad.
people with money wore long cashmere wool overcoats, mostly politicians walking behind marching bands.
their wives rode in the trailing green convertible ni long green wool coats. they sat on the rear window ledge
of a moving car, waving irish flags even if their name was Dukakis or Menino.
most elected officials had names like Kennedy, Flynn and White. .they were all always only there, marching and riding behind
fast moving high school bands. it was impossible to stay still. it was always cold. we wore short coats which made it easier to bomp along to boom-bah-bah-boomp the rhythm of drums. that low groaning whomp-whomp-whomp that made me crazy with delight.
weeks before it was time for the GREEN bagels to be out i was planning
what GREEN clothes i had to wear. my cat had a GREEN bow.
my Mother dug out the GREEN tablecloth. there were GREEN cardboard shamrocks
on all windows and doors. we were up-to-level, on line, ready to rock.
hey it’s ST. PATRICK’S DAY, here comes the GREEN beer
and the kiss-me-i’m-irish buttons coats all over town. a frenzy of GREEN everywhere. GREEN nail polish, GREEN hair spray, and GREEN emerald ribbons. ..flags, banners and confetti. how could anyone be still?
i heard an ugly rumor that the church may have taken back the saint papers
on ST. PATRICK but perhaps it doesn’t really matter. it’s too late to tell
the people. we all need a parade, a GREEN bagel or a GREEN ribbon now. everyone out on the street, before it snows again.
if you didn’t live in BOSTON, it would be hard to understand.
it wasn’t really so much about ST. PATRICK and getting the snakes out of Ireland…
it wasn’t so much the JOY OF BEING IRISH. it was more about the joy of being alive at the end of a long cold New England winter. . .
ti was more about being glad to have that CELTIC romance with GOD and all the SAINTS and being able to sing about it,
dance about it. stomp down the avenue with your drum or trombone to the tune
of AMAZING GRACE. coming up again, rising up out of the icy weather with your GREEN bagel,
the boiled cabbage, a corned beef and whiskey.
thank GOD for ST. PATRICK’S DAY.
It gets the blood boiling again… reminds us of the resurrection. .the elections. .
our right to celebrate, procreate and mandate what’s next and spring forth, to it!!!
