Apiary At Blue Hour

Rooftops hold their breath before morning, chimneys dark as thumbs of charcoal, and from wooden boxes painted cloud-white bees rise like struck notes from a hidden piano.

The sky is still iron at the edges, but each wing keeps finding a brighter seam; they stitch the hour to itself, a gold thread pulled through wet air.

Below, buses cough and bakery doors unlatch, steam climbs alleys, warm and yeasted. Above, the hive speaks in a thousand small vowels, a throat of summer practicing its first word.

By sunrise the city wears their labor lightly: pollen dust on balcony mint, honey beginning somewhere no eye can see, in the quiet architecture of flight.