Field Notes from the Old Observatory

At the hill's crown, the observatory rusts open like a tin flower left to weather. Swallows stitch dusk through the broken dome, their wings quick commas in the blue draft.

I stand where astronomers once charted distances, and foxglove rises through cracked terrazzo. Light pools in the lens housing, rainwater and stars sharing one cold alphabet.

Far below, buses drag their bright nets through town; up here, grasses lean and whisper in radio static. The mountain keeps transmitting old weather, fog, iron, thyme, and the breath of stone.

When night arrives, no one turns the machine. Still, the sky enters anyway, slow as ink, patient as moss, writing us small and luminous in the dark.