Code Talkers

boxer shorted well into
a tuesday afternoon,
it is summer.
he's showing me

the dictionary left
for him
after the war -
our grandfathers'
sons
born in letters
the same year,
invisible from the Pacific -

how quiet I had to be,
pondering a list
of words
that had forgotten love
(or thought it
unnecessary)
and made fighter planes
of humming birds.