New York City, May 10, 2016

★★★★ A police officer, on the phone out in the cool bright morning, was recounting the capture and return of a truant student. The warm season was still holding back, not coming on all at once. Jeans were appropriate, and jackets. Thin clouds came on to scatter the light, then thicker ones began to suppress it. Finally the clouds thickened enough to become breakable, and the lowering sun glimmered in the trees above the subway entrance. After dinner, out by the river, drifts of greenish fallen petals lay rotting at the foot of a wire fence. A robin cocked its head and stabbed at the damp ground. The sunset proper was an ugly orangish non-color but the rest of the sky was rich deepening blues and brightening whites. Pale limbs of pale-leafed sycamores stretched out over the empty Classic Playground. People not especially dressed for bicycling rode by on bicycles. The only thing the four-year-old wanted less than to stop running and climbing around was to keep using his legs on the walk back home.