Once a year, around Christmas,
we’d get to see the only movie
the grade school owned.

Sitting in rows of wooden chairs
on the basketball court, we’d pretend
we loved The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima

when really we wished that all three
children would meet Count Dracula
on the mountainside instead of

the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary, we knew
would make them into saints, would
make the skeptical villagers

believe in miracles. For years we hoped
for something different, and then
finally, it came—

first, The Yearling, dying in the boy’s arms;
then Old Yeller, foaming at the mouth,
nothing to do but shoot him,

and then the voice of Nature, describing the rattlesnake
lying in wait for the prairie dog, the lion
descending on the wildebeest.