New York City, October 29, 2013

★★★★ The morning was still dark blue when the toddler started calling out from his crib, but the clock in his room said he wasn’t really in the wrong. He permitted himself to be held semi-quietly in the big bed for a few minutes, then climbed out and started hauling on the chain for the shade, hand over hand, till it was all the way up. Helping you, he announced. Boiling orange sunrise reflected in the windows of the old apartment slab to the west, the light not yet obstructed by the rising new tower to the north. By late midday, clouds were intermittently muting the sunlight. An immense, dark bee hovered stubbornly beside a sidewalk trashcan, then finally landed on the edge, flexing its abdomen. A leaf blower crew was working the grounds of the tower complex. The Hudson was a neutral blue, with dark flickers going downstream in it. A tugboat and barge, both red above and black below, nuzzled in mid-river, moving either imperceptibly or not at all.