Wolf Moon

for Ursula K. Le Guin,

October 21, 1929–January 22, 2018

The Wolf Moon took her, and the blood moon mourned her.

O moon that pulled my tides, o little mother,

I loved how in your novels you switched gender

as one might toss off one dress for another.

And then you altered further: to my wonder,

you wrote The king was pregnant to uncover

the way language itself colludes to sever

female from male, the human from the other.

How can a world exist where one’s not lesser?

You showed me. But utopia means nowhere.

And then you changed again, yinward and lunar,

acknowledging that gender isn’t minor

or a handicap to suffer, but one factor

of many used to dictate who has power

and who does not. Nusuth, your Taoist answer,

it doesn’t matter, doesn’t mean surrender

to how things are. Rather, it means endeavor

to find your way from here. No one could stop her.

And yet she’s gone. Nusuth. It doesn’t matter.



—Susan McLean