Poetry by Joanne Harris Allred
This giant has held its yogi-gaze
for over three-thousand years.
A spiral gash scores the two-foot thick
bark where lightning blazed
through the feathered tiers.
One would need five yard-sticks
to measure its memory’s ring-span,
its top too tall to be seen
from the base where one must stand
humbled. This monolith of deep green
silence began as a dark pinhead, coded
magnificence in profound concentration.
Then, like a black hole, the seed exploded
into a galaxy. For centuries its attention
has stayed one-pointed, each bough
and twig focused right here, right now.
Joanne Harris Allred has three full length poetry collections: Particulate (Bear Star Press, 2002), The Evolutionary Purpose of Heartbreak (Turning Point, 2013), and Outside Paradise (Word Poetry, 2024). She taught at California State University, Chico for many years and lives in northern California.
