New York City, June 23, 2013

★★★★ A Brazilian youth tour group, in matching red t-shirts, poured through the 67th Street entrance to the Park and began rhythmically clapping and cheering. The gates to the Sheep Meadow opened and the waiting picnickers rushed in to colonize the few round islands of shade, blankets and folding tables and wrapped-up food trays deployed in moments. Behind them, with much more space to choose from, the sunbathers filtered in, slowly dispersing and lowering themselves and stripping down, the sun pressing their pale bodies to the lawn like a thumb flattening out decals. The Brazilians youths found their way in too and sat down in red-shirted clusters all the way from the gateway to the trees. The kindergartener ran laps around the toddler and announced he was sweating. A stray frisbee bounced off the toddler, harmlessly. A carriage horse trudged by outside the Sheep Meadow, its neck a long downcurving gesture line of equine weariness and sorrow. The next carriage horse looked fine. The toddler discovered a little partly-consumed water bottle in the depths of the bag, cloudy from the previous drinking of it, and grew enraged when he was kept from drinking from it. A fresh bottle, heavy with condensation, was procured, and he drank from it, and drank some more, and asked for another drink. Drifting soap bubbles assumed near-primary colors in the ferocious light. The children began to scooter home, hair dampening under their helmet. The toddler jumped of his scooter in midblock to stare after the sound of a motorcycle starting up. It was not bad, in the shade. There was still plenty of day left, and if you stayed out of the openest spaces, there was nothing to prevent anyone from running errands.