New York City, July 5, 2017

★★★★ The sun cut severely between the leaves and twigs, making gentle dappling below. It cast the end-on shadows of sign lettering and the precise silhouette of a security camera. The breeze was easeful. New bare scaffolding and crosswalk stripes and the silver paint on the top of a fireplug all glowed. A pigeon with a white clerical collar bobbed along beside a table of onions in the greenmarket. The tomatoes were still from the greenhouse. On its long way down the sun raised the grain of the sidewalk. The subway platform was hot and stale after the freshness of the cross street. A woman fanned herself with newsprint on a train filling up with the reek of the passengers’ bodies and with the reek of the things applied to the bodies. Up on the surface, the lilies in bloom made the Broadway median smell like a florist’s.