New York City, June 12, 2013

★★★★★ The river was brown and stirred up; the clouds were white and whiter over deep blue. A man brushed his teeth on an east-facing balcony; a woman several balconies below him lay back in a lawn chair and held a newspaper above herself. The streets were tranquil. One of the glowing clouds briefly intercepted the sun over Alice Tully Hall, then retreated. The fountain in Lincoln Center looked like a cut-glass abstraction. A flat pink cap finished a pedestrian’s outfit of pink seersucker shirt and pink seersucker shorts. Down on the subway platform, some wayward flying insect landed on the wrist of the hand holding the new book of poems. The wind flipped shirttails. A beer truck, pulling over in the bike lane, scraped loudly against the flourishing spread of a small tree. Beats spilled out the open windows of a blue car, with neon rims and passengers riding front and back. The descended sun, as an afterthought, drew a hot pink line in the western sky.