Fuse

Years, now. --Cities
past that. To be
able to name them

--quickly,
backwards: a proof
I no longer require.

If a wilderness,
to fail,
to flourish,

could ask for
help, would it?
--How?

Questions more
answerless than
unanswered.

Anchorless--not unanchored.

There are animals that
can be trained clear of
anything except lack

of restraint when
what they love has left, and

then comes back.

There are many of us
like that.

You remind me
sometimes of a man
before you; sometimes,

of another
since: turning,
toward me--to

the body a gesture I think

he thought must
in that country have meant
follow, it

means, doesn't it,
to be saved?

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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