Quarter-View, from Nauset

If to be patient were less
an exercise

and more a name to be worn, say,
in the middle--

that he might wear it--

Of the linen sash to
his robe, of linen,

that his hands have
fashioned a knot such that
the knot suggests now a dragonfly in

flight from what is harmless and

not, entirely--
that he might, if at all, know this

only as when without understanding it
we know we have and have come to

expect we shall have always

upon others
an effect we do not
intend--

His face:

a face, turning. And
then a turned one.

Carl Phillips is the author of From the Devotions, a finalist for the National Book Award, In the Blood, winner of the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize, Cortége, finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award, Pastoral, and his most recent collection, Tether (2001). He teaches at Washington University (St. Louis), where he has also served as the director of the Creative Writing Program.

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