The Carpet Trade (Hooker)

Lyrics

[Intro]

[Verse 1]
In the barn on Route 1, near Augusta, 1941,
Pearl Kinnear McGown set up her frame,
three feet by two, burlap stretched tight as a drumhead.
I watched her fingers, callused from wool,
pull strips through the weave, quarter-inch wide,
dyed with onion skins for that soft yellow glow.
The hook, steel bent, worn smooth at the handle,
pierced and looped, painting with loops instead of brushes.

[Chorus]
Oh, the frame held it all, that wooden rectangle,
propped on sawhorses in the chill, 45 degrees,
smell of lanolin thick as the fog rolling in.
Pearl said, every loop is a stroke, a story in wool,
from old flannel shirts torn and reborn.
I apprenticed there, pulling my first floral pattern,
under her eye, in the golden light of four p.m.

[Verse 2]
The scissors, sharp as a lobster's claw,
cut the strips straight, no fraying allowed.
Wicker basket overflowed with greens and browns,
salvaged from coats worn through winters past.
She taught me the rhythm, thunk-thunk through the burlap,
wind howling cracks in the barn walls,
stove crackling woodsmoke to chase the cold.
Pearl's book, 1966, 'The Lore and Lure,'
sat open on the bench, pages dog-eared.

[Bridge]
One afternoon, crumbs from molasses cookies
on my gloves, sticky sweet, I hooked a rose petal,
thinking of Point Nemo's empty shores.
No crowds like the Bangor exhibit,
just me and the frame, looping memories.
Pearl wrote in '52, choose colors that breathe,
and I did, pulling yellow through the grid.

[Verse 3]
The truck outside, old Ford Model A,
loaded with frames for the fair,
but in that barn, it was quiet craft,
no words wasted, just the pull and the loop.
I brought it home, that frame's echo,
to weave rugs for the coracle's deck.

[Outro]
The hooker from Maine, Pearl at 48,
taught me to paint with wool, innocent as the sea.