The Distance Around Myself Seems Smaller Now


Not that location matters much 
when Lewis Island is only sometimes an island. 
At high tide in Jamaica Bay Lewis Island becomes 
part of the ocean floor.
Not when some days 
every man I walk past
looks exactly like Ed Koch.
Especially the middle-age Polish immigrants
shuffling back and forth along Manhattan Avenue, 
which is strange—
their faces are too solid 
and their girth 
is all wrong.
But still, for just a moment each one 
takes on that thin-chinned bird like look and I think
there he is. Again and again.
Lewis Island 
is an imaginary island
modeled after Hog Island—
which really does exist, sometimes, in the center 
of the East River, 
and so for a moment, I really wonder
how one man can move so quickly 
from block to block
always walking toward me
from the opposite direction.