The Weather's Archivist

Above the stratosphere, the satellites keep vigil, small silver seeds in a field of unplowed night, listening to clouds the way a cathedral listens to breath, storing each tremor of light in their quiet cores.

They watch storms rehearse their blue percussion, trace rivers like handwriting pulled across a page, catalog the shiver of ice as it loosens from its shelves, and the slow smoke that lifts like a question.

Down here we tilt our faces to forecasts and windows, trusting their cold eyes to translate the sky's grammar; they are the librarians of weathered hours, indexing the hours we forget to name.

One day the archives will be read back to us: a century of heat, a century of hush, the planet's pulse preserved in patient circuitry, and the bright, brief music of our living.