Page 41 - Thorn In The Heart

Chinh Nguyên

Dong's city. The Thanh-Lap village had raise among the plain
countryside of the Red River delta since the vast of the green
field were surrounding the village. It was about ten miles at the
South-West of Hanoi Capital in North Vietnam and had over
five hundred villagers living from the generation to another in
the village. They have been loving, sharing joys and sorrow with
each another from their true hearts. They were generous, patient
working on the farms, and living beside the natural countryside
with the joyful.

The farmers closed to the rice stalk fields, large ponds, and
green of bamboo’s bushes, plus with the wild country fields.
Those were surrounding the village to be the grass root ideal of
the peaceful coexistence in the villager's life.

Along the side roads in the village, people had planted the
green enclosures, and the walls have built to separate the private
properties on some places.

Every day, Nguyen would like to watch the birds dancing,
and singing on the branches of the trees at the sunrise. Also,
Nguyen loved to see the birds flying in the sky with the colorful
clouds at sunset.

Sometimes, Nguyen hid on a large branch of the tree and
kept silence to pay attention at an egret bird. Nguyen learned
that some egret bird lived alone and always stood quietly on the
mud-water bank of the pond to hunt the small fish. A lonely
egret bird waited for a small fish swimming in the water toward
and nearby him, and then very quickly he caught a fish by his
long beak. He gulped a fish slowly down in his throat. Then
again, he was waiting for another victim in quiet and patient.

Few times Nguyen looked at an egret group, they were
wildly and noisily on the top of the bamboo’s bushes, where
they had built their nets and fight from each other to occupy the
net. Another group had looked for food on the paddy field;

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