The army told us we were on Freedom’s Frontier
but I was a kid on a hill halfway around the world.
Korea’s fabled medieval forests had been stripped
by forty-four years of Japanese occupation,
the Korean war, and ten years of erosion.
Firewood was precious, most villages without power.

Korean women climbed out of the valley
body heat swelling cotton clothing cinched at wrist
and ankle against the January wind
to where I sat alone on frozen ground
maintaining radio contact, listening
to the river in the headset, 106’s
firing idiotically over the knoll, jarring the quiet
for weapons platoon practice—the women came
to collect firewood from the ammo boxes, looked at me
to make sure I didn’t mind, then seeing me nod,
went ahead and broke down the boxes
and loaded them on the A-frames made from branches
they carried on their backs,
built a fire with scraps they had set aside and squatted around the fire
over twenty women of various ages,
and, as they got comfortable, turned, one after the other
their brown beaming faces, and giggled
shyly beckoning me over to warm up
yes, close to the DMZ those women
squeezed me in among them around that fire
on an empty freezing hill, guns going off out of sight
as we did our best in a language I barely understood
warmth translating every word
the radio crackling in the snowbank
between explosions