New York City, January 31, 2013

★★★★ Water splatted against the bedroom windows at some hour, in the darkness. Loud buckets of it. At dawn there were still big drops here and there on the glass, and the building was still groaning in the wind, but the sun was making bold effects among the clouds, white and slate and gold. The Hudson was dark and rough, tipped with whitecaps. Everything sparkled. Movers were working across the hall, propping open the apartment door, and there out the far window was the not-so-dead brown of the Park, wasn’t it, right there. The whole illuminated panorama snapped into place. Out on the entryway, garbage gusted in sharp turns. The cold was serious again. The handles of the toddler’s stroller pressed back when pushed into the wind; when released, for experiment’s sake, the whole thing began rolling in reverse. Sunset colors were caught in the chop of the river. Toward midnight, a rising gibbous moon stood framed in the cross streets. On the sidewalk downtown, up against a restaurant, a couple was locked in thrusting kisses, indifferent to the temperature.