Sadie Steinberg (1920-2018)

Field Guide

by Lisa Hirschfield
for her grandmother Sadie

Our morning walks

through cool chaparral

salt air and wild sage

trying and often failing

to memorize 

the accurate flash 

of color

until I could get home 

and open the book you gave me 

Golden-crowned sparrow 

house finch

Oregon junco

not to be confused 

with the rufous-sided towhee

and once the actual blue 

of a robin’s egg

All unexotic

but I wanted to know their names

their songs

their seasons

their other homes

Unlike learning to press wildflowers

watching your hands

gently arranging

larkspur

sand aster

cranesbill

and the illicit orange 

of the California poppy 

We interred them between volumes 

of the World Book Encyclopedia 

1955

For days I imagined pages 

of bright fields

But there was no place 

in my world yet

for faded things forced

into the wrong dimension

Though I must have saved them somewhere

because I never could throw anything away

because back then 

everything had a face

Now I am only sure of your body

so delicate it takes

four men to lift

so you can lie in the garden 

warming 

maybe feel the breeze

brush your paper skin

I imagine myself descending 

like you into these flowers 

you once named cosmos

but then my body buoyed 

by this invisible sea 

of sound and light 

How will you recede 

to that single point in the dark

When I was ten 

you told me 

once you hear a meadowlark

you can never forget it