Golden Field Guide

There is no pocket-size book
like my mother’s Golden Field Guide
of North American Birds. I can’t trace
her pencil marks—her penmanship precise,
calculated capital loops like her mother’s.
1983, Boulder Woods neatly placed,
cornered, a sighting fine singers; nesting in crotches
of shrubs. My guide, a collection of notes, gathered
from letters, penned in my unperfect
cramped graphite scratches, marks my
lineage. Photos my mom shared
with me like crumbs scattered on frozen
Pennsylvania ground. We echo: chins,
little girl noses, and blue-green eyes.
Mary begat birthed Ruth; and Ruth begat birthed Marilyn;
and Marilyn begat birthed Rebecca and her siblings;
Ruth died of cancer spread so far they lost the start
three years before I arrived. Mary, awaiting a lunch date,
died of a heart attack a month beyond my birth.
But they knew me—I was in them all along. The world
was waiting. It couldn’t contain us all. Each day
I witness their voices reverberating—where I gather
their stories in my own yellow book
with bright blue barn swallows.