Four Leaf Clovers

It is an Irish tradition, I think
And I’m Irish,
Well whatever the excuse,
Often when I come upon
A patch of clover,
I will spend a moment or two
Searching for the elusive
Four leaf clover,
The good luck charm
Of popular belief.

I would occasionally find one
And consider myself lucky
Until one day I discovered
An isolated patch
In my own front yard
Down in San Diego.
Almost every single clover
Was of the four leaf kind
And a few even had five leaves.
It was a genuine freak of nature.

I have never seen anything like it
Before or since,
But I nearly picked
That poor plant clean
Preserving those lucky clovers
In scotch tape.
Every now and then
I find one of those clovers
Stuck in an old book somewhere
Almost forty years later.

Now I don’t know if those
Clovers really work or not,
But I will tell you this,
I have gotten lucky
A time or two
In the last forty years,
So maybe they did their part.
The little patch
Didn’t fare so well, however,
Or maybe I stole all its luck!