Apiary Above the Freeway

At five a.m., the rooftops unbutton their tar-black coats, and hives wake like small brass engines warming in the fog. Below, the freeway drags its chain of headlights west, a metal river muttering through concrete reeds.

Bees lift off in gold punctuation, commaing the air between satellite dishes and laundry lines. They read the city in ultraviolet margins, finding nectar in balcony basil, in ivy clinging to brick.

A siren bends, then thins into distance. Pollen dust blooms on their legs like borrowed sunrise. Each return is a soft percussion at the hive mouth, a thousand tiny knocks on the door of morning.

By noon, heat will hammer the roofs flat, and glass towers will flash their hard, indifferent psalms. But now the sky is a pale bowl filling with light, and sweetness is being carried home, grain by shining grain.