Land of Love

Response to “Wild Boars, India 1944,” Milford Zornes

It's never clear when one can be certain of

sand dunes, curled through centuries of sun

the shifting borders of the land of love: India

with her wind-cut canyons, cleavage of gritty hugs

alien to the land-face, shaven to the faintest nub

clear and smudged, soldiers in this land of love

too hot to walk by day,

too frigid winter nights

the cobra’s tree-hidden attack

on the ticklish inner thigh,

the wild boars’ slow daytime grazing,

slow tracks marred by the quick prints

of shuffle and death by mud,

a refugee's only home

to be erased too soon in monsoon flood,

rearranged, a buried mystery

how can the soldiers, the families near the

trees, the tourist in me, negotiate this treachery

of borders always shifting in the land of love

here an ancient ocean once uncurled its tongue

But now the once-soothing sea dehydrates,

salt the only flavor, fresh blood quick dried,

the low braying of calves being born,

headlock clicking of horn on horn

the longtime sideways of

death and life, unshorn

and I'm left to wonder what pulls me here

to this gritty world, the soldiers, in their

stealth reconnaissance and invading

the foreign land, still, a form of home

at once known and unknown

in the shifting borders of the land of love

July 31, 2008

Copyright 2008 Ruth Nolan