It has been a good while since the sun came out and encouraged me to walk home (rather than take the bus) after finishing up for the day at the library where I work in San Francisco. Probably it was that same sunshine that caused me to notice the well-weathered metal plate above (which I must have passed a thousand times without noticing). It is set into the base of a concrete lamp post in the middle of the Panhandle.
The clouds above the trees were behaving in a pleasing, three-dimensional way, leaving most of the sky clear as a better backdrop for themselves.
But later – over on Potrero Hill when I was walking home from the gym – they had spread out more like a two-dimensional panorama as the setting sun turned their edges pink above the tawdry shopping center.