Lens of the Derelict

The observatory sleeps in nettles and tin rain, its dome a cracked eggshell holding a weather of dust. In the slit of the roof, swallows sew blue stitches, and the air tastes of copper and old maps.

I climb the spiral where rust blooms like lichen, each step a slow bell rung for a vanished crowd. The telescope's throat is dark with moth wings, but it still points, stubborn, at a starless noon.

Outside, the hill exhales fennel and dry grass; a coyote yips, a small hinge in the afternoon. Light pours through the broken lens in a white river, and for a moment the ruin remembers how to see.