The Day the Dye Took
Madder root pounded on the courtyard stone,
the pot kept just below the boil.
Cream wool went in at noon
and came out the colour of a held breath.
Dyeing day comes in autumn, after the shearing and before the snow, when the courtyard is still warm enough to stand in with wet arms. The madder root has been drying in a sack since spring, and she pounds it on the flat stone by the door until the water in the big pot goes the colour of weak tea, then of wine, then of something she has no name for and does not need one. The skeins go in cream and come out this. Not scarlet, not brick, but the red that sits between them and belongs to the high ground alone, and she ties it a finger deep so that it will keep the cold off a floor that is really the earth.
Forty years have brushed the pile close and taken the hardness out of the colour, so that what remains is warm rather than loud. It lives now in a tall room with white walls and a long table, where it holds the whole space together without asking for attention.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.