Rooftop Apiary, Before Traffic

The roofs are still wet with moonlight, water beading on tar like small held notes, and from painted boxes the hive breath rises, a warm grammar braided from wings.

A beekeeper lifts a frame as if opening a psalter, gold cells lit from inside by first sun. Smoke drifts thin as handwriting, while traffic far below clears its throat.

Pollen dust glows on her cuffs, a soft yellow weather no forecast can name. Each bee returns with a map in its body, street to clover, clover to dance, dance to home.

By full morning the skyline hardens to glass, but here the air keeps a meadow’s accent. Honey gathers in the dark like stored August, and the city learns, for one hour, to listen.