In third grade, one afternoon,
we were ushered into the auditorium
for a 16mm animated film
about dinosaurs.
As comets and asteroids fell,
pocking the earth,
so did the huge creatures,
“The Wine-Dark Sea” and “The Weighing of the Heart”
A sea wife,
my mother didn’t have time
to pace a widow’s walk,
searching for a sail on the horizon.
She was too busy
pinning up sheets to dry,
weeding the garden…