Apiary in the Observatory

At the hill's abandoned observatory, the brass dome opens like an old eyelid; morning pours in, yellow and particulate, and the first bees lift from cracked consoles.

They map their weather through constellations of thyme, threading sunlight between shattered lenses; each wingbeat strikes a tuning fork in the rafters, a small cathedral learning how to hum.

On the star charts, wax rises in patient hexagons, covering Orion, swallowing the hunter's belt; sweetness stores itself where equations faded, amber grammar written over dust.

By dusk the hill smells of metal warmed to honey. Night arrives and the hive glows from within, as if some distant galaxy has nested nearby and chosen, for now, this earthbound roof.