At the Orchard Observatory

The orchard keeps its clocks in fruit, pears dim as lanterns under weathered leaves; a ladder leans against the dark like a sentence the wind has not finished.

Above the rows, the sky is a cracked bowl of milk, stars sift through it, slow and cold. I listen for the engines of constellations, for any small machine that names us.

My hands smell of iron, soil, and apple skin. Somewhere a fox threads the furrows, a red thought moving between shadows, carrying the night in its teeth.

By dawn, each branch will seem ordinary again, just wood, just weight, just winter’s arithmetic. But now the trees are tuning forks, and every hanging fruit hums with borrowed light.