Inventory of the Greenhouse

The greenhouse sleeps with its ribs of iron beaded in cold, each pane a held breath. Moss has written its slow alphabet along the gutters where rain once rehearsed.

A coil of hose lies like a shed snake, its mouth open to a dry spring. I lift a pot and the soil falls away in crumbs that smell of tin and dark.

Outside, the wind keeps tuning the door, a thin music of hinges and pine. Inside, light sifts down in pale squares, as if the sun were learning patience.

I count the empty benches, the hooks, the nails that once kept tomatoes aloft. Somewhere beneath the frost-line of glass a seed believes it is still summer.