Weather Inside the Observatory

The old dome unlatches one inch at a time, like a throat remembering song. Night air pours in with the iron taste of rain, and the telescope lifts its blind glass to the weather.

Inside, moss has climbed the stair rail in green handwriting, softening the brass, the bolts, the cold arithmetic of gears. Every abandoned instrument keeps a little climate: dust for summer, shadow for snow, rust for dawn.

A swallow crosses the cracked aperture and leaves its cry turning in the chamber. The walls answer with a dim, mineral music, as if the stone has been storing thunder for years.

By morning, light gathers in the lens the way water gathers in a footprint. Nothing here is ruined, only listening: the room, the sky, the patient machinery of weather.