White Amber (Essay‪)‬

The sudden spring. Twilight at 11 p.m. and twilight at 2 a.m. A spring condensed in the far north, the bloom on, the different new greens, from near yellow through chartreuse to leaf green to pine. The beautiful woods, the silver birches in the road cut, behind them the red-barked small pines and a tree I don't know, its trunk the color of old pewter and its new leaves ruddy, that other green, the blood of spring. This is the third week of May, this is the Baltic coast, the cold sea, grey or steel blue, just there. This bus driving through the rushing season. Two weeks ago the ground was rough with ice, they say. Now the birdhouses are loud with cheeping. Arriving in the bloom and not long for this place, it will always be spring here for me. Forest and farmsteads. Around the farm buildings the brightest thing the stacks of new-cut firewood, silver and salmon, opened by the raw strokes of the axe. It won't always be spring for the farmers, already wood-making for next winter, winter just past. The fields green, green, or a new-tilled brown, or absolute yellow, rape seed in flower, I think, not sure, not knowing much for sure, passing through.