Greenhouse in the Old Observatory

By noon the telescope has become a trellis, its long throat furred with climbing beans and the glass dome sweats a weather of basil, small moons of water trembling on every leaf.

Once this room kept its vigil for distances, cold brass listening past the grammar of clouds; now tomatoes kindle in the raised beds, lantern-red, with their warm provincial stars.

The floor remembers winter through its cracks. Mint pushes up there, bright as a rumor, and bees drift through the old equations of light as if sweetness were the final proof.

At dusk the roof unlatches one pane of sky. Vines lift their green wrists toward it. The first real star enters without speaking, and every seed in the house turns over in its sleep.