"Wissahickon Schist"
Click the arrow on the audio player to hear Karl Kirchwey read this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes.
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What did you think the color of learning was,
if not mica and hornblende flashing in a long-settled gray?
You look for a plane along which it will cleave
to admit the self, but it is you who are divided
always between resolution and doubt,
having read A small amount of fissile material
was smuggled across, remembering certain islands
long ago, the windblown passages between,
wild thyme on the offshore breeze from Lemnos
or the white slash of a coral runway at Tinian.
You open a book to the stories of changing forms
and see the guts of a mole exploded on the lawn,
a red-tailed hawk balanced, nonchalant, on the railing,
and the day's light cut on such a deep bias,
one February afternoon, with a thousand starlings
aligned in the branches of the silver pendant linden,
that it seems the whole earth will tip into a chasm of dark.
You write A secret lapis, shedding ... then stop.
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Karl Kirchwey is the author of six books of poems, most recently Mount Lebanon, and of a translation of Paul Verlaine's first book of poems, as Poems Under Saturn. Professor of the Arts and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Bryn Mawr College, he is serving as Andrew Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome from 2010-13.
For Slate's poetry submission guidelines, click spacerhereyeshyperlinkPoetry SubmissionsSlate reads new poems from Oct. 1 to April 30. Manuscripts sent between May 1 and Sept. 30 will not be considered.To submit poems: Send, as a single attached document, up to three poems of no more than 50 lines each to editors@slatepoems.com. Use the poet's name for the subject line of the e-mail and for the title of the attachment. We prefer Word documents (.doc or .docx) to PDFs.Please include a brief, professional cover letter, including publication history, in the body of your email. Please limit submissions to one per poet per annual reading period. Simultaneous submissions are OK. Slate no longer accepts poetry submissions by mail. The email address editors@slatepoems.com is for poetry submissions only (or to notify editors of acceptance elsewhere of a poem under consideration at Slate). Other inquiries, etc., will not be addressed.10000false220061444537PMWednesdayJanJanuary161/4/2006 9:45:37 PM63271989937000000020061444537PMWednesdayJanJanuary161/4/2006 9:45:37 PM632719899370000000.Clickhere to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.Click here for an archive of discussions about poems with Robert Pinsky in "the Fray," Slate's reader forum.