Manual for Listening to Rooftop Bees

At dawn the beekeepers climb the apartment ladders, smoke curling from their tins like quiet brass. On tar-black roofs, boxes hum with amber weather, and laundry lines tremble as if tuned by wings.

The city wakes in metal syllables below them, buses kneel, shutters rattle open, steam lifts from grates. Between antennas, the bees write slow equations in pollen dust and sunlight shaved from windows.

By noon, tomatoes in paint buckets glow like lanterns, mint spills over cracked concrete, perfuming rain. A child on the fire escape cups one fallen worker, hears in her body the small engine of August.

At dusk they harvest: frames dripping warm and lunar, honey thick as old violins in their hands. Night gathers on brick, and the roofs keep singing, a hidden orchard held above the sirens.