My Mother of Invention

The needle goes up and down on my mother's Singer, 
squat black with its gold scroll and script, 
shaped like a smokestack turned on its side. 

Have you ever seen a dipper bobbing in a stream? 
It's like the Singer but so much slower. Its beak 
makes thread of water and sews patterns of spreading ripples. 

Such a fierce engine at the center of creation 
and beautifully sculpted, a porcelain boot 
or a falconer's gauntlet. The dipper likes the action 

of a cataract, the rapid tumble of rapids, 
and if it wants, walks easily along the stream's pebbly bottom. 
Hour after hour, my mother's fingers fed the fabric 

through the pressing foot, kept the seams flat, 
while thread spooled out and the bobbin, coaxed up 
from its metal gear, held the stitch. 

The American dipper? What joy in finding such a bird. 
Its short trills punctuated by sharp, clear zeets. 
Its eyelid white against total gray when it blinks. 

If it didn't exist, you'd have to make it up. 
You'd have to give it its own day of creation, 
a day of translucent patterns, pinking shears and pins. 

You'd have to say, come see how the sewing machine 
in its sleek skin dips and bobs and swims, 
and how my mother, white eyelid lined blue, 

sings her same stitched tune—never remembered 
so never heard—and how like a solitary 
calls out, not in air but under water.