Estuary of Wires

At dawn the rooftops unbutton their tar-black coats, and hives wake like small brass harmoniums. Bees lift in spirals through steam from laundry vents, gold punctuation in the city's first sentence.

Below them, buses kneel and sigh at curbs, coffee carts strike flint against the cold. The river carries peeled light under bridges, a long blade turning silver, then milk.

I stand with a smoker, a veil, and yesterday's noise, watching each worker return dusted with weather. They map the wind by touch, by rumor, by sun, and stitch the morning shut with nectar.

By noon the skyline will harden into numbers, windows repeating their bright official prayers. But now the air is an instrument being tuned, and every wingbeat says: begin again.