The Forest's Ear

By the old dish's rusted throat fern fronds lift like green antennæ, catching the hush of rain as if it were a broadcast.

The cables are gone, yet wind still threads the tower with a low hymn; birds perch on the rim and tune the sky to a small, bright key.

Below, the concrete pad is a pond of reflected clouds and fallen needles; each ripple edits the horizon, a slow hand erasing and writing.

At night the bowl holds starlight, collects the cold as a kind of speech; the forest bends its ear to itself, listening for what it has become.