This cheerful poem was written by my mother in 1967 for her son who was seven years old at that time. My mother, like me, had an affinity for all things poetic. Both she and my father read a lot of poetry and passed on their love of poetry and literature to their children. What we did not know as children was that my mother also wrote poetry, albeit not much, but she wrote when she could as we later discovered. She did share a few of her poems with us, but she was very reserved about her talents in that area. Her life as mother and wife was the life from which she drew her inspiration. She was a real fan of children's literature. As I remember, she loved the poems for children written by Robert Louis Stevenson in his 'A Child's Garden of Verses', and this poem reminds me of his poetical style.
Dinosaurs in my Dishpan
I’ve got dinosaurs in my dishpan
Lions and tigers too
Lots of soldiers and sailors
A regular little boy zoo
All of them part of an army
Fighting an unknown foe
Climbing the walls of a castle
Or sliding around in the snow
Sometimes they’re part of the navy
Loading each gun with a shot
Then they’re out on a race track
Riding along at a trot
What a wonderful imagination
Fills the mind of a little boy
He can move a man or a mountain
Just by pushing around a toy
When the enemy is defeated
And the battle becomes extinct
Boy deserts his playthings
In my dishpan in the sink
So I pick up what’s left of the army
Rescue the dinosaurs too
Put them away in the toy box
Home for my little boy’s zoo
Written by Anne Elizabeth Fennell De Angelis
1967
