Seed Vault at Noon

At noon the city clicks like a dry insect, traffic-light dust settles on shuttered fountains, and in the library basement jars of beans glow softly, planets with paper labels.

A volunteer opens one and the room fills with a small weather of soil and memory, my grandmother's hands return in that scent, brown crescents under her thumbnail moons.

Outside, lawns are maps of forgotten rivers, hoses sleep coiled like patient snakes, but here each kernel keeps a folded rain, a green sentence waiting for a mouth of earth.

We sign our names beside varieties of hope, carry envelopes thin as bird bones home, and all evening the wind tests the windows as if practicing how to arrive as storm.