Infinite Love in No Man’s Land
Crawl on your knees
through this minefield
of a world
we have created.
Crawl through the sliver
of earth we have left them, shore
to shore, rocky mountains, forests, wetlands-
thin splinter of broken mirror revealing
what the world once was.
See how they embrace what we leave,
this wasteland we have turned
our backs on, turned our rifles toward
with barbed wire a burial ground trap--set
to keep out our own kind.
Crawl where they dodge
the most densely mined land on this planet
we were once blessed with before bombs,
see how only what we must leave, leave alone,
returns, flowers, flourishes.
See how they re-create the world, cranes,
red-crowned and white-named, promenade
greening wetlands, musk deer dance light
around buried bombs, passing through wreckage
of our warring.
Crawl, with such care, do not crush what thrives,
this endemic whose name speaks infinite
of the one thing that would have, could
save us from sanctioning our estrangement
from what this world gives.
See them only in shadow images captured remote-
blurred rush of Asiastic bear cub prancing in a clear stream,
wildcat at night, eyes bright by camera's flash,
faces turned toward us, surprised to find
we still exist.
Yearn to see them, to know they still exist-
Mongolian race runner, mountain goat, golden eagle,
river otter porpoising between two warring nations,
lacing them together with water dance, only there
because we are not.
We name them, we count them, we are not
among them--is this what it will become, peaceful
co-existence, thriving paradise, mirror made whole,
after we have set our last trap and trapped
our last selves?
The author notes that the DMZ "is a 155-mile long, 2.4 mile wide strip of land that has been off-limits to civilians for seventy years. . . . Scientists have recorded over 6,000 species, many endemic and endangered, in this unintentional wildlife sanctuary. The rare Patrinia saniculifolia, a flowering plant endemic to Korea, is found in abundance in the DMZ. Its name means 'infinite love'."