Spires shoot to the sky,
With branches, storied
And open as mercy.
In the roots, trees are tangled,
Their stance is pilgrimage.
Stones are markers of witness.
Pious boulders are breaking
Earth into a monument, strayed
About devotions, undiscovered
Tombs, wells and light— rains,
With eyes, pining thoroughfare,
The needles in the evergreens.
Morning is Magi mist, air, reeds,
And rolling dew of whirls colliding,
Some twining visions of Heavens,
Fell to earth, loamy and richly
Wrought, hints of purple and rose,
Thorny in the stations of bramble
And sorrels and in the palms of fern,
Joined in trinities of wild clover,
The sacred water beads—
Holy in the reborn cups
Of the chalice leaves.
*— poem for St. Patrick's Day
A shamrock is a young sprig of clover, used as a symbol of Ireland. Saint Patrick, Ireland's patron saint, is said to have used it as a metaphor for the Christian Trinity.