Don Hogle

By Caron Andregg, Publisher It started with one short phone call. In 1999, Robert Wynne and I were both in Los Angeles, fixtures in the vibrant and exuberantly productive LA poetry scene. At the time, Robert had recently edited the “Beyond the Valley of Contemporary Poets” anthology and I had been producing high-quality chapbooks and editing a poetry calendar and daybook.

Because there is no word for you or the almost we had, I name you finch, flirting with the edge of my vision. Not a gift or prize. Not in a cage or room. A force of volition, beating against mine. Purple, zebra, euphonia, house, red-headed bullfinch, black rosy-finch, chaffinch, Cassin’s, goldfinch. Briefly visible on a branch before I turn. Gap that held your song. Song heard at the border of sleep. Bird barely here, do not leave. I am all yours, you wrote. I am all yours, you said.

They are nocturnal, you know. My four-year-old niece told me so— and she’s got the 411 on the rainbow. I search the hollows of my memory for the origins of my own discovery: crooning creatures made of mulberries, cotton candy clouds, and emerald grass, freshly cut in summer’s mythic morass stretching across childhood’s hourglass. But unicorns don’t live in the past, silly: they only dwell where we can’t see— like the sneaky souls of day lilies.