Greenhouse in the Old Observatory

In the hilltop dome where equations once kept winter, glass sweats with basil and wet soil. The telescope sleeps under a canvas skin, while morning climbs the brass ribs like ivy.

Seed trays glow where star charts yellowed. A moth circles the red switch of the tracking motor as if it were Mars, as if desire could be measured in slow revolutions.

Rain drums the shutters; tomatoes answer in scent. I tie their stems with strips of retired ephemerides, numbers loosening into leaf and tendon. Above, the slit in the roof admits a blade of weather.

By dusk the planets rise without our names for them. Condensation pearls on the eyepiece we no longer lift. Still, in this warm dark, everything is observing everything: root listening to stone, hand listening to root.