Cartography of the Rainshadow

A valley wakes with a paper‑thin mist, its edges erased like a pencil behind glass. Wind turns the firs into listening instruments, each needle taking a note from the sky.

On the ridge, the rain rehearses without falling, a soft percussion on distant roofs of cloud. Below, the fields keep their quiet grammar, verbs of green, nouns of stone.

I unfold a map that smells of iron and clay, rivers written in the careful hand of thaw. My finger traces a route between two silences, one called before, the other after.

When the sun arrives it does not explain, only warms the seams of the world back together. Somewhere a hidden creek clears its throat, and the shadow learns the shape of water.