Desalination Morning

At dawn the desalination plant exhales a silver fog. Gulls turn like loose screws above the intake towers. Sea brine climbs the pipes, dark as old cello varnish. Inside, turbines keep a metronome no one applauds.

Workers in orange gloves test the newborn water, hold it to fluorescent light as if reading weather in glass. The room smells of iron, raincoats, and hot circuitry; somewhere a valve sighs, a patient animal at rest.

Beyond the fence, fields wait with their cracked mouths open. Irrigation channels remember vanished rivers by shape. When the first stream runs, dust lifts in small choirs, and tomato leaves shine like coins rinsed clean.

By noon, the ocean has paid its salt and gone blue again. Tankers move inland with their trembling cargo of morning. From far hills, you can hear pipes humming under roads, a hidden throat carrying rain where rain forgot us.