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.