New York City, August 13, 2015

★★★★★ Bright and shapely clouds, smooth in general shape but a little ragged in the details, stood in not quite formation against a clear light blue sky. Their distribution was irregular but complete, so that blue and white were fully and multiply represented in every gap between buildings. The sweltering stale atmosphere in the subway had nothing to do with the topside air. Up on the new, high office roof — the view easily spanning from the Hudson to the East River and the abundance of of water towers in between — the sun was strong, the parapet hot to the touch. Plants stirred in some rooftop gardens and stood still in others. The street shade deepened while the higher floors of buildings still shone. A family of three generations swayed and sang along with a street trumpeter playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” on his silver horn. In the tranquil night, the smell of growing things entered the cab window on the approach to the Park. The sky was discolored by haze and light but cloudless now. Prolonged gazing up into it gradually revealed faint stars, elusive to the eye but fixed in their places, and one very late distant passing airplane, and then — possibly, fleetingly, in the floating uncertain depths of vision, a quick fingernail streak that might have been the incineration of a Perseid.