Apiary Above Ninth Avenue

At dawn the freight elevators yawn open, and two keepers climb with buckets of smoke, past satellite dishes slick with last night's rain, to the hives breathing warmth into the wind.

The city below is all siren and timetable, yet here each bee writes a gold equation in air, solving distance with the grammar of wings, bringing clover from vacant lots no map names.

On lunch breaks, accountants look up from glass towers to a drift of amber traffic over tar roofs, as if summer itself had found a narrow stair and carried sweetness back to the concrete.

By evening the combs hold a dim, patient sun. Jars line the sill like captured lanterns. We taste one spoonful and hear, for a moment, the whole borough flowering in the dark.