The Dome Turned Green

The old dome keeps its round silence, its ribs of steel still dreaming of planets. Now a ladder holds basil and marigold, and a hose hums like a low orbit.

We come after work, hands smelling of rust, to plant seeds in the cratered floor. The telescope is a long sleeping animal, its eyepiece wrapped in plastic against rain.

Moths write small constellations over the beds, a drummer in the park keeps time with thunder. We water until the soil darkens, almost black, and the air becomes a wet instrument.

In the glass oculus, clouds gather and release, each drop a faint data point from the sky. Nothing here is measured anymore except growth— the slow, green answer to a night that keeps looking.