The Orchard of Quiet Satellites

Above the town, the old antennas sleep like vines of copper braided into dusk, listening to the faint crackle of rain crossing the tin roofs in slow handwriting.

A boy once whispered into a handheld radio and heard his voice return as if from a cave; now the air is full of pale orchestras, instruments we cannot see, only feel.

The orchard behind the station is unpicked, apples hanging like small moons with bruises, each one holding a hush of summer heat and the long, metallic taste of distance.

I walk the rows and touch the cool skin of fruit, thinking how messages fall and ferment, how silence ripens, how signals forget their own names and become a kind of light.