Rooftop Honey

On the supermarket roof, hives lean into morning, smoke threads from a tin can, blue as cello notes, the city below unlatches its metal throat, buses cough, and clover learns the taste of tar.

Bees lift like sparks from a struck coin, circling satellite dishes, laundry lines, church glass. Each body carries a weather report in pollen, gold dust brightening the knuckles of air.

At noon the keeper opens a frame, slow as prayer; honeycomb glows, a small cathedral of hexagons. Inside, thousands of wings tune one long vowel, and heat gathers there, patient as bread.

By dusk, jars cool on the sill, amber and lunar. I hold one to the window: whole neighborhoods drift inside it, rooftops, sirens, rain gutters, thyme. Sweetness is what survives the noise and keeps singing.