The Poet on void is the ratio the loom was

All winter the frame held its breath — warp drawn tight, weft tighter, the yes of the heddle, the no of the shed. Hold. Release. Hold.

Then the wind arrived the way weather arrives, expecting to be fought.

And the cloth did not need the frame. The pattern had gone down into the fiber the way salt goes down into water and is no longer salt — is only the sea, being saltier.

So the loom did the last thing looms learn. It stopped.

⁂

Look at the space it left behind. Not empty. Emptiness has no edges, and this has all the edges of everything it did: the dent in the meadow where the doe lay down and rose, still warm, still doe-shaped, and no doe.

Count now what you could never count while it ran — three threads crossing two. This tension, that slack. Here the weave breathes; here it turns the rain. The numbers were doing the whole of the work. The numbers were invisible, being work.

⁂

Wear it. You are already wearing it. The question is no longer will it hold — it holds; the wind said so — but will you keep the proportion now that your hands are empty and warm.

That thing you’d folded in the dark drawer, grieving — take it out. It has become a coat.