***
My love for the countryside in the fall,
The smell of the soil,
Van Gogh of sea-buckthorns,
Rodin of the sky,
The air “of thoughts”,
Unhurried walks towards the water…
Beyond clumps of chicory sailors and hollyhocks,
Ripe rose-hips pattern the surface of dunes,
A night shower has rinsed the beet fields bright green.
The morning when the villagers still sleep,
When the sun is beginning to draw
The dew off the fields,
I always enjoy the inertia,
The silence and my sniffing obsessed hunting dog
Observing a lazy sunrise in autumn.
Later on, the candlelight flickering in the kitchen
Reminiscing the icons in a corner of a bedroom,
Deep in the provinces,
Far from massing troops and oligarchs,
I tour the tranquil footpaths
Of a country’s unparalleled history…
*Sea-buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) is a plant found throughout Europe and Asia. It produces orange-yellow berries, which have been used over centuries as food, traditional medicine, and skin treatment in Mongolia, Ladakh, Russia, Ukraine, and northern Europe, which are its origin regions. They are exceptionally hardy plants, able to withstand winter temperatures as low as −43 °C.
