New York City, January 27, 2016

★★★ Stretching out from the northwestern corner of the glass tower’s low-rise terrace, a curving bay of newly bare paving tiles had reduced the untouched snowpack to an isthmus. Ever-larger serrations in the coastline followed the pattern of the row of planter boxes. Down on the cross street, an uncollected trash bag had slid down the back side of the snowbank, narrowing the already narrow sidewalk even more, just at the point where a squished dog turd lay. The rubber-bottomed boots were a little too hot indoors. An airplane cut an uncanny reverse contrail through a thin sheet of cloud. Then the sheets broke up and clumped into little high thin segments, blowing north, even as low fluffy shreds of cloud blew south below them, the whole sky going retrograde. Before day’s end, it had all settled into an ordinary and orderly flock of cumulus.