Dish for the Smallest Weather

On the mesa, the dish is a pale moon tilted to earth, its ribs holding a circle of silence. I kneel in gravel, pockets full of screws, the horizon a slow animal breathing dust.

Wind drags its fingernails across the metal. My wrench learns the language of stubborn bolts, a bright clink, a brief star. Somewhere, a generator hums like a distant river.

When the feed horn blinks green, I feel the sky lean closer, as if it has been waiting to be named. Static blooms, then thins into a choir of soft stations, weather reports from cities I will never walk.

Night settles like a tarp over the work. The dish holds its quiet, newly tuned, and I listen to the thin threads of voice stitching the dark to something that answers back.