The Orchard of Meteoric Glass

At dawn the hillside is an orchard of impact, pear trees stitched from slag and cobalt rain. Each trunk keeps the night’s thunder as a sap that glows when the wind leans in.

We walk between fallen stars the size of lungs, cool as river stones, faintly ringing. Our baskets are empty, our palms are warm from the hush of held heat.

A fox pauses, nose to a crater’s rim, as if listening for old instruction. Above us the sky is rinsed and helpless, a porcelain bowl without its spill.

By noon the glass fruits sweat their light, we press them to our foreheads and learn a new season. The day tastes of iron and wild pears, and every step is a bell we can’t unhear.