Rooftop Apiary in November

At dawn the roofs unbutton their tin coats, and smoke from bakeries drifts like calm handwriting. Between satellite dishes, the hives wake to the slow gold engine of the sun.

Workers lift off, small violins of weather, threading laundry lines, cranes, church bells. They return dusted with park-light and clover from cracks where sidewalks keep a hidden spring.

By noon the city tastes faintly of warm metal. Inside the boxes, hexagons brighten, each cell a lantern storing August against the long committee of cold evenings.

At dusk I close the lid with resin on my thumbs. Traffic below keeps its iron ocean. Above it, one last bee draws a black arc home, and winter pauses, listening at the stairwell.