At the Closed Observatory

The hill keeps a white dome like a knuckle of bone, rain-polished, listening to weather instead of stars. Grasses lean against the locked door, their thin green tongues spelling a language of return.

Inside, dust has learned the planets by heart. It turns in the beam of my flashlight, a quiet galaxy of lifted skin and chalk, small moons circling the rusted wheel of the roof.

I put my eye to the sleeping telescope. Darkness arrives first, then a slow blue tremor, as if the sky were breathing under ice, as if distance were only another name for patience.

When I leave, dawn is rinsing the east with copper. A blackbird lands on the dome and sings once, clear as a struck glass, and the whole locked building answers with light.