New York City, June 8, 2017

★★★ The driveway was filled with sun through the suddenly bare bones of the scaffolding there. Gradually the quality of the light got worse. The air was damp and oceany, with a breeze from the east. Screeches rose from the birds in their street-corner peaceable-kingdom tableau, crowded in with the cat and the small mammals. Bright ripples like woodgrain spread across the clouds in the west, where they were beginning to pull apart. The timing was exactly right for the sunset, one color after another spilling up to soak into the clouds. The sequence went on and on, so extended that even as the main sky darkened, the last of the reds—a deep brick one—found an angle on a tower to the north that allowed it to reach down over the top of the apartment slab in its way.