Greenhouse Before Rush Hour

Night's last siren folds into the gutters, on the roof a greenhouse breathes like a lantern, tomato vines lift their wrists of dew, and cranes beyond the river stand listening.

Inside, basil releases a dark bright note, warm soil steams in trays of waking seeds, the glass keeps pale fingerprints of rain, each drop a small bell struck by first light.

Below us buses open their iron mouths, people spill out carrying Monday on their shoulders, yet here bees stitch gold thread between blossoms, and mint keeps rewriting the air.

By noon the city will harden to chrome, but now leaves turn their green pages slowly, as if weather were a language we can relearn, as if concrete also remembers spring.