These Things are Salted

In the middle of the next century
a young man walking
with his love
or picking mushrooms
or perhaps
with his own young son
on his shoulders
will lose his legs and lie
a bleeding, helpless wreckage
of all his young dreams
Victim of a mine

These things are salted
strewn about
with reckless abandon
in the truest meaning
of the word
by the Johhny Appleseed
of land mines
A million here, a million there
lying forever in wait
for the step of a wild young deer
or this young man

What do we tell him, what words
are there
for the stripping of his land
and a life without his legs
That we thought it vital
to the murderous revenge
of some long-past argument
and walked away
Littering the generations not yet born
and making their single mis-step
a bloody vindication of our own