The Loom Was Narrower Than the Room
Warp strung wall to wall in October,
cut down in the first week of March.
Five months of purple,
and the edges remember every one.
The loom went up in October, two poles and a beam and the warp strung tight between them by two women pulling against each other across the room, and it came down in the first week of March when the snow on the pass began to soften. Five months is a long time for a rug to be on the loom, and this one shows it in the honest way old mountain pieces do. The tension changed with the weather and with her mood, and the sides of the rug drift a little as they go, a hand's width here and there, so that it is not quite a rectangle but something more like a field seen from above, with the purple running through it like water finding its level.
It is a Beni M'Guild purple, the one made for the hour after sunset, and the years have deepened it rather than faded it. Long and not too wide, it lies now in a hallway with a tall window at the end, where the light travels down it twice a day.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.