Call from childhood

Enjoying the wind on the side of Lau Thuong – Hac Tri. The rice has just sharpened its legs and smoothed the hair of the field. The potted grass blooms with tiny white flowers like grains of salt sprinkled from the sky. Fragile white flowers on the dusty red dike. At noon, the Lo River sleeps across the empty wharf. The sand-carrying boats toiled against the quiet current. The thick bamboo grove is confused, dreamy, filtering the clear sunlight.

Illustration (Source: Internet). There was a commotion of flutes around the herd of buffalo lying in the green grass valley. The sound of puffy breathing of an old buffalo with a broken nose lying on its snout on the edge of the earth speckled with footprints. The sound of chewing slowly and deliberately tasted the new grass-flavored water. The sound of the wind through the bamboo arch pulls each dry, brittle leaf. In the distance, as far as the eye could see, the red brick kilns wailed with thin smoke. Early in the summer, the Lo River is still the same as it was a few decades ago. City people feel like they are a few decades younger, a few dozen years old are anxious and indifferent to the earth, sky, and plants. Rows of rice plants on the riverbank are in full bloom. The crooked branches are like strong carvings against the light cloudy sky. The flock of flutes on the buffalo’s back heard the sound from afar, and they fluttered their wings and took off into the red flower arches. The white spots on the black bird’s wings fluttered like paper torn to the sky. Shivering. It sounds like a singing flower. Words earnestly call back childhood. Hanoians for many years have almost forgotten about the giant rice flower trees located on the grounds of Uncle Co’s house by the river. Strolling on the blue dyke, the May grass in March looks at the brilliant rice flowers rising up from the most luxurious shimmering octagonal building in the period. Warm brown tiled walls and roof edges of seals. La Cha dropped each red rice arduously. The flocks of black starlings, starlings and starlings from the north bank of the Red River pull together to make noise all day long. In March, the clusters of rice flowers are still persistently glowing red around the building. The sound of the starling is absent. It’s as if there’s a whole new raging river out there. Vehicles roared with smoke on the one-way dike road going like a flood. The river of people flows. Not a glance. Can’t stop. Hanoians just indifferently passed by the fluttering memories of the past, now faded in the shadow of the strange and colorful buildings along the river. There is no longer a grassy path on the dike surface to relax on foot. The grassy embankment like a green thread stretching across the city has disappeared, making way for the doodles of a mosaic of ceramic pieces. Not serious and heroic, urging like a poster of any day. It’s not enough to laugh like the Graffiti pictures of children stealing paint in the middle of the night with paint cans. Hanoians follow the call from their childhood in their hearts. Upstream of Lo River, Red River. In March, we see alluvial beaches and green corn banks. Sunny skies. Wild rice stalks let down their flowers to boil and light the riverbank’s fire. And the chirping of starlings called the flock from the other side. There are also rice flowers. Hanoians still have to wait a few hundred more years, the rice tree in front of Ngoc Son Temple on Hoan Kiem Lake will be big enough as in memory. Absence of the bright red flowers in March on the side of Tower Pen, Dai Nghien is an irreparable loss. There will also never be any hope of seeing a majestic big tree at the corner of Van Mieu garden where Nguyen Thai Hoc street intersects with Ton Duc Thang. Under that giant rice is the Hai Co shrine all year round. Called a temple, but there is no architectural work at all. It is the rice plant. And it also seems that there is no specific “Miss” name to be worshiped. God of banyan tree, ghost of rice tree, nowhere to be. The corner of the street was paved with flat bricks after the rice tree died. People have left Hai Co Temple under the rice to go somewhere else. Only a faint bewildered pink color of childhood is left…