★★ Sequel time: another summer day looped backwards through the projector, with storms unbuilding to a clear and quiet finish. A tolerably damp morning turned into another downpour, and another downpour after that. When that part was done, everything was waterlogged, with the unwanted heat rising faster than the…

★ Rain first splatted, then pattered, in the dim morning. Fog filled in the woods. Birds chattered and trilled; wings flashed white against the darkness of sunflower hulls. Little round chickadees bounced from cane to cane of the dormant trumpet vine. The boards of the porch were slick with water and damp greenness.…

★★★ A rim of bright sky to the north, in the morning, made it seem as if the clouds might be going. They reconstituted themselves soon enough, though. The only change from the gray days before was that the old, hard cold was back. Dry skin and a dry cough came to meet it—nothing too awful, yet. Daylight did its…

★★ Bright clear sun was quickly suppressed, before it could inspire any hope or enthusiasm. Pruning crews were up on cherry pickers snipping the strings of lights off the trees on Broadway. A dim blue light gimmered on a trove of abandoned drink bottles in the express track bed. The cold sank in through the sneakers.…

★★★★ The coats—it had been just cold enough to require the coats—made a thick heap in the corner of the pew, leaving scant room to sit. What had been a cloudless sky was intermittently veiled as the children scurried after the eggs. When the eggs were gone, the three-year-old turned his residual excitement to leaping…

★★★★ Smells moved individually on the air currents, rather than hanging together in one stale accumulated stench. The sun had a little sharpness to it, but high clouds screened the worst of it and it no longer had the angles to unleash its full power. Summer’s late bid at awfulness had collapsed like all its previous…

★★★★ The light bouncing under the scaffold could have passed for direct sunlight, till the direct sunlight appeared. The subway had aired out a little; Prince Street smelled of festival food. The afternoon sun made the eyes squint, and squinting brought down a lit-up line of eyebrows, blurry spangled halos along the…

★ A food cart’s row of light bulbs glowed conspicuously at midday, under the persistent gloom. Little raindrops had streaked the windows; the children had needed outerwear. Downtown, the sidewalk psychic stared blankly from her chair. It was not quite raining but not at all nice: neat raincoats and careless sunny-day…

★★★★  Someone found it irresistible to start jackhammering in the earliest daylight. Downtown, a woman in a light dress and broad-brimmed hat posed for a photograph in the bicycle lane, after pausing for a cyclist to go by. The sun backlit the clouds into fierce whiteness–white puffy cumulus clouds and clustered white…

★★★★ Moist and moderate, a day misplaced from some other month or latitude. The chill in the air was mild, to be welcomed through an open jacket or an open window. Surely there were extra errands worth running out in it, excuses to take a stroll—but the clock and the daylight had not abandoned their December duties.…

★★★ Thin spots of blue showed through the clouds, seen straight up from the pillow. Again cool air had come in through the window in the night; so had a mosquito, perched on the bathroom mirror, where it left a red smear of fresh human blood when squashed. So had a pepper cloud of tiny insects, up at the top of the…

★★★ There was something near-springlike about the brightish sun and the heavy drip from the scaffolds. The north was blue, the southern sky white and more whitening. Snow aging to slush lay in the planting beds around the trees or where a tree should have been. The three-year-old held the scooter handlebars with bare…

★★★ A rim of bright sky to the north, in the morning, made it seem as if the clouds might be going. They reconstituted themselves soon enough, though. The only change from the gray days before was that the old, hard cold was back. Dry skin and a dry cough came to meet it—nothing too awful, yet. Daylight did its…

★★★★ 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…

★★★★ A sky of solid rippling gray became one of open clear blue in the time between waking up and the morning viola lesson. A disc of wan reflected daylight reached the floor of the practice room through the round window, revealing the yellow in the fluorescent light all around it. Another hour or so and there was…

★ Intermittent rain threatened to consolidate, but never did. The wind was cold, the ambient chill strong enough to sink in. Steam billowed from a stack in the street. The rain went away, but the gray and chill remained. Maple wings and the untrampled portion of the pale fallen leaves blew along the sidewalk.

★★★★ Under the thinnest filtering clouds, the recycling truck worked its way through the lot, supervised by a crow and the toddler. The brief and deliberate dose of unsunscreened sun did nothing to awaken the melanocytes, dormant or now possibly atrophied from city dwelling. The surf at morning high tide was tinted…

★★★★ After a foreboding moment, blue showed through the gray. It was surprisingly cool early; thin sheets of cloud took the edge off the sun, and little breezes were moving. The sidewalks were well smeared with dog shit, the rain long overdue to make up for accumulated inconsideration. Potted boxwoods awaited planting…

★★ Two dense flocks of little dark birds plunged past the window, against the gray. The sun was a white unround blotch, the warmth was ebbing, the light dull. Wind rattled in the withered drab oak leaves still on the branches. The afternoon was short, though by nightfall the clouds had separated into individual forms,…

[No stars] The snow from overnight, now the newest old snow, lightly covered the older and dirtier snow. On cars that had been driven, melted patches showed the ghostly pattern of the internal structure of their hoods. To the east, the sun on the whiteness and the wetness gave everything a spurious pristine shine. The…