This photo mesmerizes me.
My daughter took it last week in Laos
where she worked with a program that
destroys bombs.
Millions upon millions remain
wedged into the countryside where
fields should flourish with
rice and coffee and
everyone sits under their own
banana tree.
Though guns be long still
unexploded ordnance waits in hard silence
for the hoe or foot
since we dropped them there:
a ton for every single living … soul.
War is deadly complex,
and I am not writing to relitigate but to lament.
When prostheses is industry and
half a country’s land lies lethal
a half century on
a joyful garden window is a
miracle of grace indeed.
Photo by Lillian Gates
Susan Wharton Gates, Ph.D is the author of Days of Slaughter: Inside the Fall of Freddie Mac and Why It Could Happen Again (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017). She is currently teaching public management while pursuing a masters of arts in religion. Her beloved small business, Vintage Picnic, has moved online.