Clade Song 15

Moon of Popping Trees

The Lakota named this month for cold
so sharp it freezes sap and cracks tree limbs,
echoing like gunshot in the shattering forest.
Other tribes called it Wolf Moon.
In this country the Maidu knew January
as Goose Moon. Driving alongside wetlands
near the Sacramento one can see why: Snow Geese,
Canada Honkers, Sandhill Cranes. A hundred thousand
swans winter here—wheeling off rice paddies,
lifting toward sky. I might
name the month Otter Moon
for those playing near the creek bank
whose white ruffs become the current’s riffle
as they disappear. Golden-Eye Moon
for the two floating downstream: the drake white
with ebony head slashes, the hen brown
as stones she bobs among until
she flies, flashing light under wings.
Moon of Soul-Hunger not even this fleet beauty allays.
Moon of Fog swallowing the hillside.

Joanne Allred is the author of four previous poetry collections: Whetstone, which won the Flume Press Chapbook Competition, Particulate, Bear Star Press, and The Evolutionary Purpose of Heartbreak, Turning Point Press, and Outside Paradise, Word Poetry Press. She taught for many years in the English department at CSU Chico while living in Butte Creek Canyon outside Chico, whose landscape often serves as backdrop and subject for her poems. With her husband and her dog she now splits her time between Humboldt County and Butte County in California.