Those Who Were Ours

I learned to mass-produce paper airplanes
In Manhattan sixty-five years ago.
Mine bore the U.S. bars and circled stars;
Aunt Marion’s the German black crosses.
For hours we threw them at each other.
My parents stayed glued to the radio
And kept six-year old me from listening.
Due to heavy censorhip, the broadcasts
Made them suspect that a lot had gone wrong.
Twenty-five hundred Americans died
Before the breakouts from the French beaches.

Four-hundred sixteen thousand U.S. troops
Were killed around the globe in World War Two.
The Russians lost twenty times as many
Before beating their allies to Berlin.
If any single country won the war,
It would have been the Soviet Union.

But it wasn’t. And what do such counts mean
On a day to recall deaths in the sand,
Face down, each to save civilization.

—June 6, 2009