[(symbol)’s really beautiful. When (symbol)’s standing in the trees]

[symbol] ’s really beautiful. When  [symbol] ’s standing in the trees
and thinks nobody sees whose.  [symbol] ’s like a stag.
Which sounds silly but  [symbol] is. The way the light shines


on whose. The way it bounces off whose hair
like spray from the sprinkler. And  [symbol]  doesn’t know.
Because  [symbol] ’s looking somewhere else.

 

Maybe up at a bird?       I was standing
and turned back because I heard
                                               whose whistling.


[symbol] thought I wasn’t listening.
                                               [symbol]  wasn’t thinking of me.
[symbol]  was looking at a bird


who was sitting in the tree
and looking back at whose.
                                               If whose shirt was off  [symbol] ’d


have been dappled golden by the sun
coming through the leaves.  [symbol]  didn’t notice me
watching whose without whose shirt on.


                                               [symbol]  was standing in the forest
                                               and the sun was coming
                                               through the trees and covering whose.


[symbol]  glowed.
I knew  [symbol] ’d be warm if I walked up and
touched whose. And probably not mad.
 

                                               [symbol] ’s like something in a movie
                                               or like a book we’d read in summer by the pool.
 

[symbol]  didn’t see me looking
because  [symbol]  was so peaceful
staring at the bird.

 

*Title should read: 
[symbol] ’s really beautiful. When  [symbol] ’s standing in the trees

From Rocket Fantastic (Persea Books, 2017). Copyright © 2017 by Gabrielle Calvocoressi. Used with the permission of Persea Books.