Connie Wanek has written several poetry collections, including Rival Gardens, On Speaking Terms, and Bonfire. As an editor of the anthology To Sing along the Way: Minnesota Women Poets from Pre-territorial Days to the Present, she received several awards. In 2006 Poet Laureate Ted Kooser named her Witter Bynner Fellow of the Library of Congress. Wanek lives in Duluth, Minnesota.

Three Poems

by Connie Wanek

Tracks in the Snow

       How was it I did not see that lofty sky before?
       And how happy I am to have found it at last.

       —Tolstoy

He lived in the house closest to the cemetery
and after a fresh snow
he liked to ski among the headstones.
New graves had an incline and a downward slope
that was gently exhilarating.
If people cared they never said so,
and his tracks were plainly legible,
a practiced signature
leading to and from his door.
He was as honest as the snow.

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