The Colour of Bread Just Out
The clay oven opened at seven,
and the round loaves came out that colour,
not brown, not gold, the warm in between.
She had been looking for it all winter.
There is a colour that only exists for a few minutes each morning, when the clay oven in the yard is opened and the round loaves are lifted out on the long wooden paddle, before the crust cools and darkens. Not brown, not gold, something warmer and softer than either, and a Beni M'Guild weaver who has been staring at cream wool all winter will go looking for a way to make it. She found it here. A peach that leans towards bread, laid across the whole field in a pile kept deliberately light, because this was the summer rug, the one for the warm months when the thick winter pieces were rolled and put away and the house wanted something it could breathe through.
Forty years have made the colour softer still and the pile close and flat. It has moved to a kitchen that opens onto a dining room, pale wood and white tiles, where it lies under the long table and looks, every morning at seven, exactly like what it was named for.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.