New York City, August 4, 2013

★★★★ A smooth blue river and an energized toddler hailed the coming day. The sunlight was keen; little girls walked up Broadway speaking German, with pale and apparently secular kerchiefs on their fair heads. Just west of the Park, a whole family on rollerblades was getting out of a Chevrolet. Within the Park gates were cyclists and runners and ballplayers and eventually people playing catch with a plastic jai alai set — everything except the children’s soccer class that had been advertised as daily, but which turned out not to be daily on Sundays. Unstructured and non-didactic playtime, then. Broken glass glinted brown and green and clear on the way up the face of the rock outcropping overlooking the playground. On the way back down, where lumps of the schist stuck up along the path of least resistance, wear-brightened crystals flashed. In the playground gateway, a skylight framed hot white clouds in a rectangle of red brick. Children splashed through the concrete channels of the play fortress. The scene was scored for solo violin, followed by solo saxophone, with an ensemble chorus of creaking swing set chains. Outside the Columbus Circle entrance, a man slept on a shaded bench with his face to the wall, a cane on the ground below him and hospital bracelets around his wrist. Pigeons and sparrows poked their beaks though holes in a garbage bag. The late afternoon achieved a melancholy flawlessness. Leaves whispered over the schoolyard and the din of a wedding carried from the new synagogue. Squirrels peeked into the trash cans, a little self-consciously. One chased another in a figure-eight knot, down and around and up the tree, over and over. The toddler advanced on the squirrels until a squirrel began advancing in return. The clouds were vivid pink and gray again at sunset, with two airplanes passing each other high up in the last of the sunlight, like brilliant silver planets. Then the clouds drifted away to leave a full, even spectrum from the purple zenith to the red horizon, not omitting the green.