Preface

Another drizzly day kept me and my son in the room. I drew the window curtain open and saw up into the sky. It is a totally grey vault!

We have been in Fosheng for several days doing nothing but attending my son. It is a long time since I read books and wrote poems at my free will, as I spend my time on appreciating the precious time on watching the leaves falling to the ground, the glorious dews on the grass, the birds skipping in the twigs of the trees, the slow opening of a small flower, right from which come out words, and sentences, even verses.

I remember the time when I was jusk a kid. I went pick up firewood with my dear playmate, Situo, a girl with long claw braids. She had a loud voice and took care of me all the time though she was just half a year older than me.

Dried twigs fell down cracking from the trees. The noise reminded me the cracking when you bite on a pepper-flavored dried turnip chips. All you could hear were the songs from some egrets somewhere deep in the words, or the rustlings left by their glides between the trees. We could see the beauty in the white clouds in the sky, in the different shades of greens in the woods, such as deep, light, and olive greens. Bundling our firewood, we went to find rasberries which were red-lantern-like berries, tasted refreshingly sweet and melted just as you put them into your mouth. Sometimes, we would run away without our firewood as a forest guard would come to shoo us away. We would come back later, however, for the firewood when he was not there. On that trail in the woodland, were not only the chirping of cicadas, but also the songs accompanied by our tender feet.

I missed the time when we felt that the moon follow us as we went to see the films in open air together with my mom, brothers and sisters. I cannot forget that I cried sadly in my mom's arms as I saw the maid weaver flew away in the story of The Cowherd and the Weaving Maid. How heartbroken I was!

Mom often took me to see plays, too. Slowly I could follow the plots of them to laugh or shed tears as I sympathized with the parts. I cried a lot when Ximei knelt down in the play of Ximei' Condolence Call.

In my childhood, we had many of the so-called scholars or grannies who had many stories in my village. And I asked them for stories when they came to my house. Some people played Erhu so well that the crickets stop chirping. In the nights of summers, the croaks of frogs came from the fields or ponds. Mom would play musical instruments and sing songs on the leveled ground with some uncles. Her voice was clear and melodious. The stars were so bright that it seemed that they were going to fall down from the sky.

The villages have planted so many seedlings in my young heart. Behind our house, there were a large bamboo forest and a large tree forest, where turtledoves and titmice built their nests and lived happily. The happy songs now and then flew into the ears of the people living in the village.

In the field, there were files of straw and cows grazing leisurely or raising their heads for a look at the quite village. With a background of the white clouds in the sky, children ran happily and smokes curled upwards from the each houses.

From the fresh young seedlings and soft grasses hatches my lines of words, my lovely words, the words with green wings.

by Xieyang Tao(Pen name:Yichu) in Lishui

March 2ed, 2017

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