Rooftop Apiary at Dusk

On the supermarket roof, the hives breathe warm brass. Evening tilts its blue bowl over satellite dishes. Bees return with pollen dust, little lantern-bearers, threading the wind between vents that cough out bread-smell.

Below, traffic combs the avenues into amber strands. A train enters the bridge like a bow across strings. I lift a frame, and the city hum rises to meet it, one chord made of engines, wings, and distant sirens.

Honey gathers where concrete forgot to be barren: in balcony thyme, in lot-side asters, in weeds by chain-link. All day they translated neon, rainwater, billboard glare into a slow gold sentence the tongue can understand.

Night comes on; windows flare open like hive cells. The last workers settle, striped commas at the entrance. I close the lid, and the roof holds its small summer sun while stars uncap themselves over the river of streets.