Cartography of Dust

In the long shed of a summer field, wind lifts the granary of dust into light— spinning continents that exist only while the sun is listening.

A crow writes a black syllable across the wheat, and the stalks answer in a language of sway; somewhere, a gate forgets its hinges, opening itself to the smell of rain.

I walk the line where the creek once learned its name, stones polished to old prayers, smooth as palms; the water is gone, but its grammar remains in the curve of silt, in the cool of shadow.

Evening lays a copper map over the barn roofs, each nail a star, each board a path; I fold the sky like a paper that knows fire, and carry it home in the pocket of my ribs.