Night Shift at the Wind Farm

At dusk the turbines wake with white shoulders, turning slow as hands rinsing stars from the bay. Salt climbs the fences in a silver breath, and gulls stitch torn light back into the clouds.

Inside the control room, screens bloom like tide pools; each graph a pulse of weather crossing steel. Coffee cools beside a wrench and a field guide, while rain writes quick braille on the window.

Beyond the access road, foxfire in the grass, small green lanterns where mushrooms keep their counsel. The blades above keep combing midnight, gathering wind the way a harp gathers fingers.

By morning the horizon tastes of copper and pears. We shut down one row, listen to the hush widen. In that new quiet, even our boots sound gentle, as if the earth were learning our names.