“Bees have congregated on the tip of the wing” says the pilot, voice sizzling over the speaker like . . . well, bees. So we wait in our recycled air, each of us singing silently inside our minds, a buzzing round, a silent, synchronous prayer to break loose the colony or cluster or whatever it is, to shake free the hive and let us depart. Dear nature, how silly we are to think you won’t eventually smear over our metals and wires. How silly to think that in pursuit of the survival wired tight inside you, you won’t crawl into our microscopic crooks and crannies, won’t break our brilliant tech bit by buzzing bit. We cover our hybrid bumpers with stickers for SAVE THE BEES and tsk tsk tsk our cfc breath. But reclamation is the song I hear just now— a faint whir building in the rear of the jet. Like erasure, black and gold felting the last hues of the human age. Outside on the runway a worker in yellow stripes lets a leather suitcase fall.…