New York City, August 6, 2015

★★★★ Thin clouds were on the sun again; again the morning air was cool. It seemed possible that the summer might have moved past its sweltering height, that the calendar and the planet’s axis had made irrevocable progress toward the autumn. Two helmetless children rode little bikes up the sidewalk of Fifth Avenue. The sun moved through pickup time, keeping its light cloud escort. Its descent looked unassuming, another unremarkable sunset — until bits of sudden bright and weird color began appearing: a flare of hot coral inside the latticed superstructure of the old apartment slab, pink and yellow bands in the northwest, a pale blue wake behind a boat on the otherwise indeterminately tinted river. Bigger stripes formed, dark and seemingly settled purple, chased unexpectedly with a late-arriving hot pink.