The Orchard of Quiet Machines

In the abandoned orchard the rain keeps a ledger, each droplet a careful bead on the wire. Rusty wind chimes argue with the crows about what counts as music.

The trees are old servers, their bark a seam of patient circuits; sap runs like slow light. I press my ear to a trunk and hear the low hum of stored summers.

A fox walks the rows as if reading, its tail the brush that turns the page. The ground smells of iron and pears, and somewhere a pump dreams of water.

I leave a coin in the soft mud, not for luck, but for the shine of it. Night lifts its tarp over the orchard and the machines learn how to be quiet.