These Sewing Hands

These sewing hands,
Now wrinkled and needle scarred,
Held tight to little fingers,
Stirred cream of wheat pots.

They washed dirty clothes
And made beds for ungrateful children.

They turned the pages in the picture books, but

These hands—
They liked to sew most of all.

Driving a thread through a cloth
Turning that cloth into a dress,
And when my sister stepped into a party
There was only competition for second most beautiful.

These hands were how my daughter ate.
All up and down the crescent they were jealous of her clothes.
She looked so good, her father wanted me to sew dresses
For his other children.

You know,
These hands,
They learned the art in six months.

They mastered it after that.

Now these sewing hands
Have pains in the joints

They don’t work the same,
Just like

These sewing eyes,
gray and cloudy
From years of abuse.

Staring at a Singer under the dimmest lights.

These eyes happily sacrificed themselves at the time.
Soldiers for the cause of beautiful blouses.

Years later,
As an old woman,
These eyes, almost a century old,
Would complain, that I was cruel to them.
They’d refuse to work right,
Teeter on the verge of quitting.

Hypocrites, both of them.
Just like these hands,

They knew they had no choice, but to help thread that needle
The same way Mozart had no choice but to play that note.