I Take a Walk in Order to Shrink

Upstairs even the sky is small.
I can glimpse it from one end
of the couch, a tiny trapezoidal roof
to the tenement courtyard.
It gives me weather reports in color:
blue, white, gray, darker gray.
I check it like I check
the clock--a useful little appliance.
I am bigger than the sky.
All day, with twitches of a finger,
I move words around a screen
the size of my forearm
and the depth of the globe.
The rest of me lolls,
huge, unnecessary
occasionally breaking glasses in the sink.

When I leave for a walk
I shrink with every turn
of the staircase
until I am merely as big as the city.
The railings fit my palm
the curb fits my step
the Hudson River fits my view
like it fits beneath the bridge
that channels the pavement under my feet
across the cliff tops
into a delta of highways
seeping into New Jersey.
I am as big as the bridge,
as big as the city.
I can reach it all
stride across it
get somewhere
break nothing.

Today, though, this is not enough.

And so, further down. Over the cliff edge,
across the Henry Hudson Parkway
and Amtrak’s northbound line,
growing more brightly colored
with every switchback of the
blacktop path
until I hit bottom
where the only parts of the bridge
left under my feet
are splatters of windblown silver paint
blending with the mica on Manhattan’s
dust skirt of rocks.
Here I can’t cross the river,
but I can bend to touch the water.
Here the breeze is on its way
somewhere else, and the currents obey
the unregulated, non-partisan moon.
Here all I can reach
is the shoreline and the cliff path.
I have shrunk to an island dweller
and grown comforted.
The sky is not small here.