My son was two years old and we were in the backyard. It was early spring, and I was digging around in the dirt when he suddenly bent double and started laughing and pointing. Dinosaurs, he said, dinosaurs! I followed his pointing finger to the patch of ferns next to us. They were just beginning to unfurl their fronds, and the stem of each was bent and curved, and in that instant I saw what he saw: the long curved necks of T-Rexes. My laughing little boy, looking at the world in a way I’d never seen it before. I have never looked at ferns the same way since. The memory of that day almost chokes me up, and so does this small poem. 

The Two Times I Loved You Most in a Car, by Dorothea Grossman

It was your idea 
to park and watch the elephants 
swaying among the trees 
like royalty 
at that make-believe safari 
near Laguna.
I didn’t know anything that big 
could be so quiet.

And once, you stopped 
on a dark desert road 
to show me the stars 
climbing over each other 
riotously
like insects
like an orchestra 
thrashing its way 
through time itself 
I never saw light that way 
again. 

For more information on Dorothea Grossman, please click here.​

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