New York City, June 29, 2015

★★★★★ Glowing-edged blue gaps in the clouds let the sun come and go. It was cool out, blessedly cool, cool enough for the three-year-old to stick to his plan to wear his knit winter hat with the Batman ears, all the way past Columbus. A treacherous wet spot slid out from under a sneaker heel on the downslope to the soccer encampment. A woman in the Park was talking loudly and with grief on the phone about needing money. A robin with its breast not fully reddened flushed from beside a puddle and launched itself across the park roadway, inches from the bumper fairing of a passing taxi. The narrow vertical sets among the Time Warner Center windows captured details of the clouds in triplicate. Crushed and twisted umbrella wreckage, completely dry, lay in a crosswalk. A woman in the subway entrance was talking loudly and with fervor about Jesus. The coolness held downtown. Up on the roof, a fly lay drowned atop a bowl of salsa dregs and rainwater. In the late-day streets were light and birdsong and the clink of cutlery. Now the clouds were single and widely spaced. Everywhere were paper shopping bags, brand-labeled and open-topped in the air, the people stimulated to commerce. The sun went down with no chromatic fuss, clean and tranquil, nothing to add to its accomplishments. In the bath, the three-year-old recounted how a butterfly had landed on his brother’s head when they were on the grass roof. Cross-checking the story revealed that the head was the shoulder, but the butterfly was an accurately described red admiral. The conjunction of Venus and Jupiter shone in the darkening west. The telescope could pick out a tiny bright speck of a Jovian moon and, at a higher power, the horns of the crescent Venus. To say nothing, between those, of a third, ghost planet, a smudge or other optical artifact of over-enthusiasm.