What the Wine Jar Knew
Burgundy, the colour of the last cup,
purple at the edges like a bruise of evening.
Twenty-two kilos of wool
and not one of them in a hurry.
The dye pot decides more than the weaver likes to admit. She wanted the Beni M'Guild purple, the one her mother made, but the madder root was strong that year and the wool came out of the pot the colour of wine held up to a window, burgundy at the centre, purple only where the light catches the tips. She kept it. It is heavier than most rugs of its size, over twenty-two kilos, which tells you how closely she knotted it and how long she sat.
Four decades later it has the weight of something that has been lived with properly. The pile is thick, the colour has mellowed to something you could drink, and it lies on a floor with the ease of an old dog. Put it in a room with dark wood and pale walls and let it do the talking: a library, a dining room, the kind of sitting room where the lamps go on early.
Handwoven rugs grow in beauty, memory, and value with every passing year.