Poem of the Week: Human Traces

BY HARRY WAITZMAN

My body continually surprises me.
While songs rise from my mouth,
my ear is deaf, my balance is gone.

I leave markers here and there,
strands of hair, snow on my hood.
I become an Eskimo tracking
life, a caribou sniffing for lichens.
On my hands and knees, I search

for human traces, ivory dolls,
the debris of a wolf hunt,
a man carved out of a walrus tooth
who walks across the Bering Strait
and howls with delight