Rain in the Listening Dish

On the apartment roof, the old satellite dish cups a night of rain like a metal ear. Water trembles in it, holding the city upside down, neon and windowlight swimming as if remembered.

Morning arrives in thin steam and pigeon wings. A sprig of moss has rooted in one bolt seam, green as a whisper no channel could carry, patiently tuning itself to weather.

Below, alarms, deliveries, the grammar of engines; above, one silver bowl learning the language of clouds. Each drop strikes once, then opens into circles, small rehearsals for every message we miss.

By noon the sun drinks half the sky from its surface. What remains is a bright, shallow silence. I lean close and hear only wind, and something in me finally stops transmitting.