Apiary Above the Train Lines

On the grocery roof, hives warm in first light, air shivers with a gold, patient engine. Below, the tracks cough up the morning train, its windows full of faces still half-night.

A keeper lifts a frame like a stained-glass page, honey not yet honey, only weather and labor. Bees stitch bright commas through basil blossoms planted in cracked buckets beside satellite dishes.

The city keeps speaking in brakes, in sirens, but the hive answers with one low vowel, a sound that rounds each hard edge until even concrete smells faintly of clover.

At dusk the comb darkens to amber scripture, day folded into cells no larger than breath. Somewhere a child tastes summer on a spoon and learns the sky can be carried home.