Lanterns for the Fog Orchard

At dawn the orchard lifts a white, breathing veil, pears hang like dim moons behind gauze, and every branch keeps a small weather of silver droplets, as if the night had been filing its quiet knives here.

I walk between rows with a lantern cupped in both hands; its amber tremor strokes bark, crate, boot print. Somewhere a train unbuttons the horizon, metal syllables dissolving into milk-thick air.

When I was ten, my mother taught me to listen for ripeness: not color, not weight, but the soft hinge of scent where green becomes honey and rain becomes bread. Today that same hinge opens in my chest.

By noon the fog will fold itself and leave no letter, only ladders, bruised grass, a pail of ordinary fruit. Still, each pear I lift is warm with vanished light, a small lantern going on inside my palm.