Do you know this place?

Late, perhaps too late,

I walked the tidal flats of Dongmak

in the morning light.

Now, having entered my seventy-seventh year,

I feel the sand receive

what remains of my blood and flesh,

as if the earth itself remembers me.

At last I have returned

to the breathing mudflats,

to the ancient circulation

of sea and sky,

of tide and wind,

and there I find rest.

O vast Ganghwa tidal flats!

One of the great tidal realms of the world,

stretching southward beyond sight,

eighteen million pyeong of living shore,

where the sea withdraws

and reveals four kilometers of shining earth.

I greet you.

I greet the clams hidden beneath your skin on West Sea of Korea,

the crabs writing their small scriptures,

the worms turning darkness into life.

Long before maps,

long before designations and boundaries,

people came here—

to gather shellfish,

to walk,

to wait,

to breathe.

The shore belonged to use,

and use became memory.

The white sand.

The pine trees.

The laughter of families

carried by salt wind.

All of it enters me now.

I stand here,

an old pilgrim of oceans and continents,

and feel my body recognize

what my heart knew long ago:

the earth is not beneath us,

the earth is within us.

Soon I shall leave again.

The roads will call,

the airplanes will rise,

the distances will open.

Yet I say this to the sea,

to the sand,

to the patient breathing flats:

I am only departing for a while.

For one day,

beyond all schedules,

beyond all crossings and returns,

I shall come back.

And this time,

I shall stay.

— TaeHun Yoon, June 13, 2026