New York City, April 13, 2016

★★★★ The four-year-old remarked on the total clearness and blueness of the sky, even as he was judging himself too ill to go outside and get to school. It was a near-immaculate blue, and at last unfaltering. The sun had leaves to shine through on the forecourt, and the new tips of shrubbery were alight with yellow-green. A luminous aura spread from a building that blocked the sun. The air came in the nose and mouth as cool and clean as meltwater coming off an ice cube. A man crouched by the curb to hold a large-lensed camera over the long sky-filled puddle in the gutter. People were wearing more bits of color, or the bits of color they wore seemed brighter. The moon in the daylit eastern sky looked pink for a moment. From Sherman Square, the familiar line of buildings down Broadway glittered and dazzled. Even now in the shade, the shrubbery held its insistent glow.