New York City, April 28, 2015

★★★★ A wash of warm sun and a puff of cool breeze balanced out one another. Gem-like details sparkled on adults’ serious running sneakers and a little girl’s decorated shoes. A pear tree stretched its luminous canopy far out over Broadway. Blue daylight showed through the slowly turning joint of the drive shaft of a truck not quite stuck in traffic. Two men cut up a split-off pear branch; the ruins of blossoms carpeted the sidewalk and street. The afternoon moon was as white as the little shreds of cloud near it in the sky. Pure whites and shadow grays met on the blue of the evening sky. The Flatiron stood up against them, promising the detail of its sunny side to the pedestrian crossing from east to west, and then delivering it. The sharpness of the numbers on the clock of the Metropolitan Life Tower was more startling than even the gold of its crown. Details of walls and furniture rose from the interior depths of the black slab of the New York Merchandise Mart, complexities to rival the intentional decoration of its neighbors.