fish in cornfields

Some mornings, Brooklyn still feels like an old harbor town. When the sun starts burning away the fog, and the air sticks to my lungs, I become a fisherman in a wool hat and a thick coat. My breath condenses on my moustache and beard as I make the trip down Old Fulton to the docks by the ferry landing to examine the boys’ catch.

I find gulls as far inland as Prospect Park on certain days. I can’t imagine they shoot straight up Coney Island Avenue from where the Atlantic seems as big as it is. I’m sure they were hanging around the garbage barges in the Gowanus Canal and heard the ducks and swans bathing in the little lake, primping in front of cyclists taking a break.

On the days when the sun can’t cut through the fog and the storm clouds roll in, Brooklyn shrinks. Hell, the whole city shrinks. Manhattan disappears in the clouds. The river sharpens and blackens, and when I trudge between warehouses under the two bridges, the gray sky might as well be a Midwest sky. There’s nothing there to tell me that cornfields don’t lie beyond my shallow horizon.