Apiary Above the Trams

At dawn the rooftops unzip their tar-black coats, and wooden hives breathe warm breath into the cold. Below, a tram sparks blue along the rails, as if the street were striking flint for morning.

Bees lift like punctuation from the comb, small commas turning the wind into a sentence. They drift past satellite dishes, laundry lines, gold dust stitched to the cuffs of the sky.

The keeper moves between boxes without speaking, smoke curling from the tin can like a minor hymn. On his gloves, propolis glows the color of amber rain; the city softens, listening through its concrete ribs.

By noon, jars fill with captured weather, sunflower, linden, rust from trainyard air. When I taste it, I hear a thousand wings translating iron and blossom into one bright vowel.