To watch the bay

and see the ships come home.

Often we’d go down to the shore,
my mother and I,
to watch the ships and fishing boats
sail in and out of the bay.
Her face changed when she looked
out to the sea,
and would get wet,
even when it wasn’t raining.
The sea shall give up her dead
on Judgement Day,
she would say.
It was many years before I learned
she waited for her first love,
who went to sea and did not return.
She bought a fish for our dinner
each time we went to the shore,
to bring home to her husband.