Carl Phillips

Silverchest

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.

From Silverchest by Carl Phillips
Copyright © 2013 by Carl Phillips