The Start of Summer has arrived. Last night, while polishing the ancestral Oil Lamp, I shook out half a poplar…
The Start of Summer has arrived. Last night, while polishing the ancestral Oil Lamp, I shook out half a poplar leaf from the wick’s ashes. A century ago, they carried this lamp down the well, and the leaf drifted down a hundred fathoms with them.
They say firelight only illuminates three inches, yet I feel it can pierce through a hundred fathoms of loess. Lately, I keep hearing the sound of water being chiseled from the well’s depths—tell me, is it an echo from a century ago, or a harbinger of a century to come?
Keep this lamp with you. When the wellwater rises past the gravel someday, remember to scoop a ladle and pour it into the lamp.