Salt Cathedral at Low Tide

At dawn the desalination plant hums like a throat clearing, steel ribs beaded with night, gulls circling the intake towers, the ocean presses its blue face to the grates as if listening for its own name.

Inside, membranes shine thin as onion skin, pumps beat a patient metronome through concrete halls, salt gathers in white drifts along the railings, small inland snow from a borrowed sea.

Workers in orange jackets trade jokes over steam, their gloves smelling of metal, algae, black coffee, outside, drought-cracked orchards wait with open roots for this engineered weather to arrive by pipe.

By noon, clear water climbs the hill in buried arteries, fountains wake, kettles sing, school sinks flash with light, and far below, the brine returns to the tide like a difficult prayer still unfinished.