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"Silverchest"
Click the arrow on the audio player to hear Carl Phillips read this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes.
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Unafraid is what we were, I think, and then afraid,
though it mostly seemed otherwise. I opened my eyes,
I saw, I closed, I shut them.
................................................The usual morning glories
twist up through banks of gone-wild-by-now holly;
crickets for song, morphos for their glamour, which
is quiet—blue, and quiet …
You: the dark that nothing, not even the light, displaces.
You, who have been the single leaf that
won't stop tossing,
among the others.
For you.
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