New York City, November 2, 2014

★★★★ In the darkness around the extra hour, the three-year-old knocked his covers most of the way onto the floor, got cold, and began yelling for someone to come and fix things. From inside the bathroom, the winds were playing flute tones on the building, clear tones moving up and down in intervals. When day arrived, the clouds were in closed ranks, which gradually opened up and departed. Getting the children out into the shortened afternoon was urgent. Out on the avenue, yellow little leaves flew straight sideways one story up, then made a near-right-angle turn and dropped. A white pigeon chased the gray pigeons away along a ledge and then was beaten back by the counterassault. Tilting and shuffling ex-runners supplemented their foil blankets with deep-winter gear; the dispersing spectators were dressed for mountaineering. The sunlight, even in retreat, had a silvery intensity to it. The neck feathers on the playground pigeons were amethysts. The younger boy insisted on shedding his vest, while the older huddled in his thick sweatshirt, complaining. Herds of sycamore leaves swept across the pavement like panicked bison, hurling themselves in a pile at the foot of the fence. The three-year-old filled both fists with fallen twigs, which he proclaimed were his Batarangs, and with which he set off after an older boy in a Spider-Man hat. The intersection of 70th Street and Amsterdam was the coldest and windiest spot in the neighborhood, by a vast and mysterious margin. Counterterrorism officers wore their counterterrorism jackets. At piano-lesson time, the older boy’s new winter coat was pressed into service. The static charge left his hair pressed flat to his head.