Atlas of Quiet Machines

The hill wears a crown of turbines, white petals turning the dark into a slow hymn. Beneath them the grass keeps its small liturgy, each blade a conductor to the cold.

Moths arrive like ash without the fire, learning the language of rotation. They test the air with powdery hands, and the sky keeps the score on its black staff.

A service road curves through the hush; my footsteps are a spill of gravel and salt. Far off, a farm light blinks—an eye deciding what to remember of this hour.

By morning the blades will sign the wind with silver, and the hill will be only a hill again. Yet the night will keep its atlas of quiet machines, pages turning, turning, to a brighter north.