by Tricia Knoll
I hear those words and think of Diana
in head gear walking in Angola,
facing pitfalls and explosives
as she walked for peace.
I hear those words and remember that rat
Magawa who won a gold medal for sniffing,
alerting and the giant Gambian pouch rats
that followed, searching for buried armaments,
whom handlers named Harry Potter and Godiva. Rats
that live nine years, a good training investment.
Battlefields laced with mines to remove legs and end lives,
in places distant from me – Iran, Iraq, Sudan,
Syria, Vietnam, Burma, Cambodia, and more
My country never a signatory to the treaty
to prohibit them. The cost to make a mine
one hundredth of the cost to remove.
I thought of land mines and never thought
my people would plant them
in fields sowed for sunflowers.
