Balloon Orchard

At dawn the field exhales its tethered moons, thin skins of color catching the first brass light. We load them with seeds and small weather prayers, a caravan for a sky that never learned to stand still.

They rise like slow questions, brushing the wind's sleeve, passing the chimney swifts and the cold breath of cranes. Below, our footprints fill with frost, then water, then memory, a map that will not be kept.

Up there the baskets creak with dried constellations, apple cores, thistle stars, a hush of grain. The balloons drift toward the high blue pasture where storms are shepherded into their pens.

Weeks later the hills answer with sudden green, odding in a language we did not teach. We listen to the distant orchard open, and feel the earth tilt slightly toward the sky.