Cartography of the Wind

At the edge of town the wind is a cartographer, laying its pale hand on fences and dry grass, sketching the old orchard where the barn once stood. Its map is made of touch and erasure.

I walk the dirt road like a sentence unfinished, listening to a tin sign tick the hours, watching dust bloom and settle in pockets of sun. Each field remembers the names of birds, but only in the grammar of flight.

A small creek repeats itself in the shade, cold syllables over stones, a quiet insistence. It doesn't speak of drought or rain— only of how it learned the shape of the earth, by practicing the same turn for years.

By dusk, the wind folds its notes and leaves. The light is a thin gold kept under the tongue. I carry home a weathered map of nothing, and still it points me, softly, to the morning.