At the outskirts of the cities, I stood on the heartlands of my uncle’s farm – rice paddies. He’d strung a basket of rice sprouts from my shoulders.
So unfolded my careful attention to him, the wet earth beneath us,
along with the mountainous horizon shedding its hues like an evolving oil painting.
Amid the churning air heated by the afternoon sun travels the rustic wind, Moving my hair and sea of summer grass all the same.
Feet submerging in the mud, spine facing the blazing sun, perspiration fusing into the paddies, We moved in the field with an uncoordinated yet synchronized choreography – our own rice-planting dance.
The sun descended to the horizon, announcing the end of its hot torture.
There laid my paddy – flags of rice sprouts with untold potential in a grid of identical others. There also came the cost – every fiber of my muscle protested through screams of exhaustion. Yet, my heart still yearned for more of earth’s beauty,
the humble earth that supported me, my uncle, and our paddy.
I wandered to the top of a terrace,
glancing at the undulating verdure,
the glittering streams encircling the paddies,
the smokes rising from the chimneys of distant homes.
Amid the sweet aroma of the sun-soaked grasses,
Amid the fields lit by the crimson sunset in shades of pink and gold,
There surrounded me with a sense of serenity that held a steadiness to my soul.
I let the innumerable grains of white rice seep through my fingers,
A thread of continuity connecting my uncle’s silent love to me,
The earth’s gentle embrace to the feeble rice sprouts,
And my fascination to the greatest magician ever existing,
Who turned manure into gold, silence to love, vulnerable to powerful.
In these moments, we understand that
the ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops,
but the cultivation of relationships in this vast similitude that cradles us all.
By Lucy Zha
