The Anemometer Sleeps

On the ridge, the old station keeps its quiet vows, bolts lacquered with lichen, the door bowed to the wind. The cup of the anemometer is a small dark seed that once read the sky aloud.

Inside, paper charts curl like dry leaves in a jar, a pencil sleeps in a drift of dust. Someone left a mug with the ring of a storm stained into the enamel.

Night comes with a pocket of stars; the metal ribs cool, and the windows fill with the long blue of the valley. A fox passes, a small orange thought, and the needles do not move.

At dawn, clouds rehearse their slow choreography, shadows walking the grass, the ridge beginning again. The station listens, a throat of rust and glass, holding the weather it cannot say.