Song of Making

by Laura Reece Hogan

Little one, hear your life

in the slanting warble of the finch. Listen

to the lilt which lifts and lingers.

Won’t you trust the shimmer and trill

cascading

through you at the rosy tone of dawn? Let

the gold dips sigh and tremble on each breath,

serenade the honeyed dew deep down

in you. Little one, the quivering bright note of you

sings out, blushes pink and wild,

rises and sparkles into yellow-crested midday

clarity. Gather high, hear

how the green calls and blues the horizon as far as

the longest loop of chorus. Attend only

to me. I say

the sugar-breasted burst of you levitates,

thrums each phrase

of your life, my fierce and fluttering yes,

yes, you,

the tender hum I carry.

---

Laura Reece Hogan is the author of Butterfly Nebula (Backwaters, University of Nebraska Press, 2023), winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry, Litany of Flights (Paraclete Press, 2020), winner of the Paraclete Poetry Prize, the chapbook O Garden-Dweller (Finishing Line Press), and the nonfiction book I Live, No Longer I (Wipf & Stock). She is one of ten poets featured in the anthology In a Strange Land (Cascade Books). Her poems have appeared in America, Scientific American, Sugar House Review, RHINO, The Christian Century, Verse Daily and elsewhere.