New York City, April 3, 2016

★★★★ The west wind had slammed against the outside wall and window in the night, loudly enough to break slumber and accompanied by lightning and clattering rain. By morning it had swung direction a few times and blown itself dry, but it still seethed and boomed. Drafts leaked in at the windows. The apartment door resisted opening. Dead leaves and a few little white petals rotated in a clump on the surface of the fountain by the forecourt. Red-tipped tree branches leaned out far from the top of a newish apartment tower. The fountain on the plaza at Lincoln Center was on as well, and the people who were out in the wind were still drawn to sit by its edge. Seen from the east, the black pool around the Henry Moore sculpture was translucent blue with the close refracted shimmer of its ripples. From the north, the water was full of a coppery flickering, the elongated flare of reflections off the coins of the wishful. Airplanes moving at their different heights had the same immediacy and intensity as the rivets in a sidewalk grate.