The Loom Room at Lyon Silk Mill

Threads like strings of a giant harp,
the shuttle swishing weaving,
feathers of peacocks unfold.

Once I saw a worker’s loom break.
She screamed, raised her shaking arms
“I’m done.” My father knelt
at the base of her loom
as she eased her leg toward him,
the palm of his hand on her shoulder
his fingers smudged with oil.

He pencils an “x” on the square
of the graph paper to show me
the new design. I stand on tiptoes
lean my hands on his thigh closer to him.

He shows me one thread embracing another.
That’s when I begin to think of him as God.

Sharon A Foley is an aspiring writer and has poems published in Solstice and the South Florida Poetry Journal. Ms. Foley has a BA in English from Salve Regina College and an MSW from Simmons College. She is a school social worker and private practice psychotherapist working on a book of poems about her early adult life as a nun.