Apiary Above the Sirens

At sunset the rooftop water tanks turn copper. Between satellite dishes, hives breathe like accordions. Bees drift home carrying the taste of linden smoke. Below, traffic threads the avenues with red needles.

The keeper lifts a frame; the comb glows cathedral-gold. Each cell a small room where summer is folded and stored. Her veil catches wind, a transparent sail of patience. Somewhere an ambulance opens and closes its bright throat.

Night rises from brick, from tar, from laundry lines. The colony knots itself tighter around its warm queen. In the dark, wings become a single low instrument, a note held steady against the restless city.

By morning jars will line the kitchen like captured weather. Toast, tea, a spoonful of rooftop thunder and clover. No one tasting it will hear the elevators, the horns, only sunlight translated through ten thousand small bodies.