Keep and Give Away: Poems

My Mother, Her Mornings

24 My Mother, Her Mornings She gathers silver-plated knives and lays them down beside her. She could close her eyes to stitch the pieces if she had to. Once, for her baby girl, white batiste drifted from a yoke of smocked elephants. She squats on the floor, takes to her knees, crawling down yards of yellow. With a sweep of her palm, centerfold to selvage, she persuades away wrinkles as if brushing off crumbs. She weights the tissue with the knives, pulls pins, one by one, from her mouth, rocks them all the way through. Where two black dots are stamped she dreams a pocket, a thin shadow of gathers to hold a daughter’s hand. 25 She sets her jaw. The time has come to cut what is from what isn’t, to risk not knowing the difference. Her best scissors lean into curves, angle out at notches. Bodice, skirt, binding (extra for pocket trim), all the jigsaw pieces for her to puzzle. She barely moves her knee to start her Singer humming. From the bobbin she hears Mother daughter,mother daughter, listen to your mother,daughter. How flawlessly her own mother, each year with one more child pulling at her skirt, could line up gingham edges and run a seam straighter than a roadside ditch. Thick-shanked buttons, collars twice stitched, how sturdy the hold. For her own stitching she wants more. Lately everything she wants hangs basted in the air, lingers with the smell of dotted swiss as if white tufts tick away the hours 26 in well-behaved rows, as if the weave holds a daughter’s days long after the hem is chalked, long after the sash is tied. ...