Early Moon

by


Early Moon is featured in Sandburg's Pulitzer Prize winning collection, Cornhuskers, published in 1918.
Early Moon
Frederic Remington, Hiawatha's Friends, The Song of Hiawatha, 1890
The baby moon, a canoe, a silver papoose canoe, sails and sails 
in the Indian west.

A ring of silver foxes, a mist of silver foxes, sit and sit around 
the Indian moon.

One yellow star for a runner, and rows of blue stars for more runners, 
keep a line of watchers.

O foxes, baby moon, runners, you are the panel of memory, 
fire-white writing to-night of the Red Man's dreams.

Who squats, legs crossed and arms folded, matching its look
against the moon-face, the star-faces, of the West?

Who are the Mississippi Valley ghosts, of copper foreheads, 
riding wiry ponies in the night?—no bridles, love-arms on the pony necks, 
riding in the night a long old trail?

Why do they always come back when the silver foxes sit around 
the early moon, a silver papoose, in the Indian west?

You may also enjoy Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem The Song of Hiawatha and our collection of Nature Poems.


8.5

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