New York City, August 11, 2016
[No stars] There was blue in the sky but the humidity had not receded. The heat was prickly on the skin; the air resisted being inhaled. Something olive-colored was thriving in a sunny gutter puddle. The plastic lid on the iced coffee fogged up as soon as it was put in place, even in the air conditioning. A seemingly indifferent back-and-forth between clouds and sun abruptly included a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder. What came next was no less indeterminate, just more dramatically so: The sun and rain both intensified, till for a while showers were falling in yellow light. By dinnertime there was just the original stickiness, but afterward more lightning was flashing in the distance, where 72nd Street pointed off toward New Jersey. Later still, another hard rain came on. Somewhere up behind it, unseeable, there was supposed to be a meteor shower.