Your crossword puzzles slumped with morphine
vials, skin-bones, salve. You’d seek the odd word
to fill in white squares in the dark. Too soon propped up 

on mountains of pillows, feather sheets
as I lobbed out origami confetti-clues: Soldier assails
the usurper? The answer was in you: Antithesis

of war and weapons. A stripling press-ganged
onto Christmas Island’s front-line — On gingerbread
houses of sand you stood togged in hazmat suits

of khaki knee breeks and dog tags on guinea pigs, islanders
in sarongs, officers in bunkers — The command given:
At ease. Turn your back. Fist your eyes. Rank and file 

witness to bomb-timpani, atomic whale-spouts. Bones
of brothers in arms and your own morphed into lightening
bugs under see-through-skin. Decades slow-cooking

in other obituaries and Time Capsules
of Operation Grapple Y — Poppy seed, snake oil
for wide-awake rigor mortis, rattler ribs

Years of deep-dug courage became a white flag planted 
in quick-sand — If only I could have, I would have borne
 witness to your final crossword clue: A silent-cry supplanted

with metaphor of face-pillow? Or poppy fields 
of copious morphine. Because we couldn't
stitch back breath and bones 

or Ban The Bomb on 28th April 1958 — 
There was no dignity 
in agony