Right now, we’re on a South Korean island, Jeju,
sitting in what China calls the East China Sea,
and what the Koreans, both North and South,
call the Korea Strait, unhappy with China naming
that body of water for themselves. This is one thing
both North and South Korea agree upon, at least,
those concurring opinions rare and continually rarer.
The other day, we visited a place in Busan
where a gesture to the future sits atop a tall building.
That nod to people who exist in the years to come
is a huge sculpture consisting of hundreds of small boxes,
each containing two dozen metal capsules holding
brief messages written by someone to those generations
yet to be, one month at a time, optimistically never ending.
Once a box is filled, another is added to the sculpture
representing the following month, and so on, into the future.
Every month a box is designated to be opened,
in a few years, 100 years, or even 1000 years from now.
On the same day we saw this site of well wishes,
North Korea fired 27 missiles into their East China Sea
I wonder, at the rate this madness from the North is growing,
how many of those boxes might never be opened,
incinerated before whatever notes of high hope
and prayers for good fortune ahead can be read.
Lanning Lee 